


knew you in a past life

by JadeClover



Series: star-hewn colossi [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cognitive Dissonance, F/M, Memory Loss, Permanent Personality Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:18:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeClover/pseuds/JadeClover
Summary: He wakes and does not recognize himself. She is awake and recognizes him even less.After returning from death, Zarkon is changed. His planet is destroyed, his friendships fractured, and though his wife is alive, she remembers nothing from before, not even her name. As he leads the Galra Empire in clawing its way frombrokentobrutal, Zarkon faces the task of not only sorting out the pieces of his own mind, but understanding the paradox of Honerva: Who she was, who she is, and who she will be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The fic is predicated on two concepts: One, that Haggar doesn't remember anything. At all. And two, that becoming quintessence zombies has not only changed both her and Zarkon's personalities, but changed them in almost exactly the same way so they (or Zarkon, at least) get the weird feeling that they recognize the changes in the other because they recognize the same thing in themselves.
> 
> I couldn't quite tell from that episode—had Haggar forgotten just one specific event, or her entire past? At this point, I'm leaning toward her entire past, and that's a really interesting concept, so I'm going to run with it. If that's not your interpretation, or if canon reveals something to the contrary, just consider this a particularly angsty au.

He wakes and does not recognize himself. As he stirs, rising from repose, a sheet falls from him, and this, too, is incongruous, but he cannot say why he would ever be waking in any other place, in any other way than this.  
  
( _Why would he be waking?_ )  
  
His mind is strangely bifurcated, split into separate categories of that which he knows to be true... and that which is also absolute truth, though these are very different things. He exists, in that moment, as two minds at once.  
  
Two minds, or two people? Two people in one mind? He reads the memory of one self—( _a vivid, brighter self_ )—as though it is his own, and it _is_ his own... but the person he remembers is not the one who lives and thinks in his skull.  
  
They cannot be separated. It is impossible to call one _real_ and the other _not real_. Even for all that has changed, there is no distinction, no _before_ and _after_. It is him. The memories, the thoughts swirling in his head now—it is all him.  
  
He is, was, and always will be _Zarkon_.  
  
His brow furrows. What brought him here? The memories come readily enough—to a point. Beyond that, they fade out. All that exists in those last trailing awarenesses is... _brightness_. Life. And _love_ —( _love and hope and desperate yearning_ ). The love of one he holds dearer than all the universe.  
  
_Honerva._  
  
As if by some half-remembered instinct ( _and maybe, perhaps, as though he knows_ ), he turns. There is an identical sheet-covered slab—( _almost as though the two of them had been lying there dead—and at that, some strange, quiet knowledge settles heavily into his chest_ )—but the sheet on this one is rucked up, pulled back, whoever lay beneath it already gone.  
  
( _He remembers now. He remembers everything._ )  
  
Drawing back his own sheet fully, he forces weakened legs to bear his weight. Clumsy, his armored footsteps are loud in the silence, offensive to his own ears, and so it is only when he lurches to a stop around the far side of the slab, the echoes fading, that he hears the rough, unsteady shake of her breathing.  
  
She does not lift her head. Her knees are drawn up, hands gripping her arms, her face shadowed by a hood and the fall of her hair—a quiet, miserable figure. This is not what his memory knows, but it does match a resonance within him, something he has learned only in the time between then and now. ( _He has changed. She has, too. Perhaps they have changed just enough to know each other._ )  
  
"Honerva?"  
  
She startles, as if she had truly not noticed his approach, and though her eyes are now solid gold limned with violet, oddly blank but wide with fright, he _knows those eyes_.  
  
( _He has never seen them before in his life._ )  
  
"...Honerva?"  
  
She draws back, and those eyes narrow, wary and suspicious, but there is something uneven in their depths. Barely focusing, she wavers under the weight of something he does not understand.  
  
She is not well.  
  
( _And now something stirs in the back of his mind, something that is almost a memory but more an instinct, some worry, some urgency_ —not well, not well, not well.)  
  
( _...Quintessence._ )  
  
He looks on her and she looks back. The strange not-separation of his mind offers him yet another bifurcation: This is not Honerva. This _is_ Honerva. He _knows_ her, for all he has never seen this face or those eyes or that wary, coiled posture.  
  
But... she is looking at him as though she does not know _him_.  
  
He drops to his knees, and she winces at the sound of his armor against the metal floor. Her eyes narrow further, and though there is still a fair distance between them, she scoots back.  
  
He regards her, his own eyes narrowed, and at last gives voice to what he does not want to accept. "You do not recognize me."  
  
A pause, and she shakes her head. Her lips are still sealed tight, a silence familiar from recent years. _Normal_ but _worrying_ —words stolen by strain. He can read it in the creases at the corners of her eyes, the clench of her jaw.  
  
"What troubles you?"  
  
Her eyes dart—somehow, he can tell that even without the visibility of pupils—but then her gaze returns to his, and this time she looks less hunted, something almost pleading past the vague, unfocused stare. She is hurt by something, and she looks to see if he can heal it.  
  
_I would do_ anything _for you_. So much has changed, but that has not.  
  
This, though, is something he does not know, a kind of distress he cannot yet name. If only she could tell him, but she still does not speak. She has looked away now, hunched her shoulders, lowered her head, as though even the effort of maintaining eye contact is too much.  
  
Her fingers, small and thin, are twisted into the fabric of the robes she wears—( _unfamiliar robes. Oddly ceremonial_ ). At times they twitch, clenching or unclenching or twisting deeper into the fabric with the waves of some unseen, racking sensation. Her eyes are unfocused, her lips parted in a lost, desolate look. Before, he had missed it—or perhaps she had been still then—but she is rocking slowly forward and back in tiny, minute measures.  
  
Had something gone... _wrong?_ A chill cuts through him. Had she not been healed as he thought she would be? Something is amiss if she cannot even recognize him, but this...? He does not know. He can only watch her.  
  
( _He itches to ask her again what is wrong, but she cannot answer and she has never, not even before, appreciated redundancy._ )  
  
She peers back after a long while, and he knows her well enough to recognize the fleeting stir of something curious, a new, quiet interest that has moved in behind the void of her gaze. She is no longer inclined to back away from him, he realizes. And then, a faint, odd stir of hope: There is still something in her that wants to be closer.  
  
(So quick to trust. _There is no part of his memories in which she could have ever been called_ mistrustful, _but some new aspect of him, as solid as if it had always been there, recognizes that and it recognizes her_.)  
  
Still, he must know, even as it feels strangely wrong to ask: "Do you remember anything?"  
  
A pause, and she shakes her head. _No. Nothing._  
  
His eyes fall closed, but it does not feel like the blow the mind in his memories would have expected it to be. Fitting—he is not one to dwell on what he cannot change, no matter that he cannot explain how he knows this about himself.  
  
The question is this, though: _Why_ does she not remember? Did something go wrong with the... the _process?_ ( _Is it some fault of his own?_ ) His memories of those last moments are scattered, faded by the light, but he recognizes with a surety that resonates that he could have done nothing else. Anything other than exactly what he did, and he would have lost her forever.  
  
_But what is this, then,_ he wonders, _if not another form of loss?_  
  
_No._ Cast aside feeling, cast aside logic—he knows _this_ : He has not lost her. She is sitting right there.  
  
Will she regain what she has forgotten, in time? Or is this the price of retaining her life— _not remembering it?_  
  
He is able to assist her. Should he? He knows what she does not, and he could tell her:  
  
_Your name is Honerva. I knew you in a past life. I was your husband and you were my star, and I gave my life for you._  
  
_I would do it again._  
  
( _I love you._ )  
  
But something stays his tongue. He cannot put a name to it, even as it trails through his mind with whispers of _"Maybe..."_ and _"Is it right...?"_ and weighs reasoning he does not think in thoughts but feels in instinct.  
  
Better to start small. Better not to push her. ( _That, at least, feels right._ )  
  
"Do you not recall my name?"  
  
A small shake of her head. At this point, he had expected nothing else.  
  
"It is Zarkon."  
  
In her gaze, silent acknowledgment. She does not look away, at least.  
  
"And yours?"  
  
Now she blinks, and frowns. Glancing away, she draws slowly into herself, appearing for the first time discomfited by her lack of knowledge. The unfocused look in her eyes redoubles, and she clutches at her sleeves.  
  
She shakes her head, brows knit together.  
  
"We need not worry about that." That too-measured tone sounds wrong to his ears, but he hopes it will calm her. He craves her calm like he craves his own; like it is air, like it is breath, the ground beneath his feet.  
  
She glances up at him again, but only briefly. Her eyes slip away, and now she just seems weary.  
  
_What now?_ he thinks. Where do they, where _can_ they go from here?  
  
Something stays that thought, too, the weight of an acceptance that is all he can bear. _There will be time_ —time for all that, for answers and more, in the future. He has questions, he has worries—she, no doubt, has questions and worries, too—but they will be able to _manage it._ All of it. They always have.  
  
Unseen, he regards her quietly. He will have to find something to call her. Something has darkened the impulse to offer _Honerva_ back to her. Would it help or hurt ( _he wonders_ ) to take the name of someone she cannot remember and call it hers?  
  
She will have to choose—when she is ready.  
  
( _She is still her, though. Still_ her. _For all that is changed, for all that he himself is not the person in his last memories, for all that she is now so different and quiet and wary, bereft of decafebes of memory, she is still_ her. _He is still himself. He will not stop loving her just because she cannot remember that he does._ )  
  
_There will be time,_ he thinks again. If he has guessed right, put the pieces together, he is not expected to be _alive_ at this moment, let alone expected to do anything else. He can sit here a while longer, if that will indeed comfort her. ( _She does not shy from his presence anymore, at least. Her shoulders have relaxed enough to read as_ acceptance.)  
  
He will ask no more questions. He is loathe to cause her any more upset, not now, not when she still seems so... _pained,_ blinking unhappily and digging claws—( _when did she have those?_ )—through her robes hard enough to reach skin.  
  
He shifts, crosses his legs, and leans back against the base of the slab from which she woke. Silence settles in save for the sound of her breathing, still so small and harsh.  
  
His eyes slip closed and he allows himself a single melancholy thought, one of a sort that is now uncharacteristic to him.  
  
( _And isn't it strange, isn't it fitting, that she does not know him anymore but when he thinks about it, truly thinks, he barely knows himself, either?_ )  
  
This is what his thought is: _Perhaps we can simply be strangers together._ A good enough resolution, even if it turns something in his chest weary.  
  
He cracks open an eye and regards her, then lets it fall closed with a sigh. Stilling his mind, he narrows his focus to the sound of her breathing alone. This, he discovers, is one constant between lives and between worlds: That sound, the knowledge she is near, her mere presence alone—despite all that has changed, it still has the power to comfort him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, there are several lines of dialogue taken directly from the episode. _Most_ of them are when Zarkon emerges from the room. Can you find the other one? ;)

The silence stretches on, but when at last it begins to wear, he turns his mind to the unknown. He was dead—( _she was too_ )—but for how long? What transpired in their absence? Have his people mourned, moved on?  
  
Is there an interim leader he must summarily oust from his post?  
  
( _What do his people think? What have they been told? Will they rejoice to see their emperor returned from the dead?_ )  
  
( _Or will they face him with narrowed eyes, hardened hearts?_ )  
  
( _Will they not realize he is just as alive as he was before?_ )  
  
( _...Quintessence._ )  
  
Opening his eyes, he studies the jags and grooves of the room's walls. This is a more cold, industrial style than is custom in his palace, but that is fitting—this room is little more than a morgue. It is likely one of the dark, quiet chambers in the palace depths, the basements he has not visited since he was a kit seeking mischief too grand for his age. ( _And here, a clue: It could not have been too long since his passing if his body had not yet been interred._ )  
  
Something is odd, though. The spareness of the design, the barely audible hum of systems running... He will admit he does not know the sounds of his basements, but if he could think of a single reason it would be plausible, he would almost wonder if he was aboard a ship in his fleet. ( _And the stars... they still sing to him. Does he imagine it?_ )  
  
...He had not _truly_ written that burial-in-space clause into his will, had he?  
  
Beside him, the sounds of shaky breathing have stilled into something slower and calmer, more measured, though there is still a harsh, strained edge to it if he listens. ( _He does._ ) He tilts his head and peers down at her; she is curled forward now, resting her chin between her knees.  
  
It has been a varga, perhaps. It could have been longer. She still has not spoken and he still, truly, does not know what to do.  
  
The silence becomes stifling, like a weight in the air, like a sheet over the face. She still does not stir, and he must _speak_. Perhaps her demeanor has quieted enough to risk a question.  
  
"Have you any idea where we are?"  
  
He does not expect an answer. Merely, he seeks to draw her out of herself, to determine if something can pierce that tired veil around her. He would give her time, all the time in the universe, but he cannot sit here forever and, truly, she cannot either. _Moving on_ —that is what they must do.  
  
"Not—"  
  
He startles, almost, his eyes locking onto her. A small lurch, as though the word truly chokes from her:  
  
"Not home."  
  
"Not... Daibazaal?" Something has turned his thoughts to static.  
  
She meets his gaze, and the answer is written in her eyes. There is still enough of her memory to know that _Daibazaal_ means _home_. She cannot explain how she knows this, and for the first time she is frightened.  
  
She is not meant to be frightened.  
  
But Daibazaal, the very name that means _home_ to him as well, awakens some deep kind of _yearning_. He stands almost before he realizes he is moving.  
  
"If we are not there, then we will _go_ there." He holds his hand down to her. "Come home with me—" ( _He stops himself before he calls her Honerva._ )  
  
She lets him pull her to her feet, but when she stands, she sways, wavering in place, and she almost topples herself over to avoid the hand he reaches to steady her. Several steps away, she regains her balance, watching him, wary and almost baleful.  
  
...So he is not permitted to touch her. At least, not unless on her own terms. The difference between this and what he remembers is stark, but he finds no difficulty in accepting it, for all his memories suggested he might. Ears flexing back beneath his helm, he skirts around her and leads the way to the door, the only exit from the room.  
  
There is a single soldier on duty outside. At the sound of the door, he spins, his eyes going wide.  
  
"Where am I?" Zarkon asks.  
  
"Aboard your ship, sir." It is haltingly spoken, as if the soldier cannot believe what he is seeing.  
  
There is only one response to that: "Take us home."  
  
"I-I can't, sir. Daibazaal has been destroyed."  
  
_What?_  
  
His eyes narrow. He has not heard right.  
  
( _...No._ No.)  
  
His every muscle is coiled tight enough to spring. "By what?" he growls, despite that disbelief tells him it is a moot question. His planet cannot truly be... _gone..._  
  
The soldier's ears droop, just a fraction. "By _whom,_ sire. The paladins of Voltron." His emperor's stare quells him for a tick, but he continues: "King Alfor claimed it was the only way to stop the rift. That it would destroy us all otherwise."  
  
For a moment, _rage_ —rage so potent it steals the air from his lungs, blocks sight, blocks sound. When he returns to himself, he stares down at the frightened soldier but does not truly see, the sight of him merely an attempt to anchor the storm of noise and calamity and fury building in his mind.  
  
_Alfor._  
  
His _friend_ had destroyed the home of the Galra people—(how? _How could he?!_ )—but not only that, he had _lied_ to them, told them it was for their own good to lose _everything._ The rift could have been stopped, contained, made safe. Honerva was _so close_ —  
  
He closes his eyes, and with some sense he cannot name, searches for her. She is still lingering behind him, out of sight of the doorway; he remembers that her footsteps halted there. No matter how hard he listens, he is too far to hear the sound of her breathing ( _but how he wishes he could_ ).  
  
"Who is in command of this ship?" he asks the soldier, opening his eyes. "Take me to him."  
  
"Right away, sire."  
  
The soldier leads him down the hall, but Zarkon lingers after a few paces, pausing until he is certain he hears footsteps trailing behind. As long as she follows. He does not want to be parted from her, not yet, but he must have _answers_.  


* * *

  
  
His fleet, now just as much civilian as crew—( _refugees, seeking shelter_ )—has berthed in the far reaches of the Dalterion Belt.  
  
"Magnate Trigel has authorized the construction of a permanent Galra colony here," the commander tells him.  
  
_Trigel_ —how _dare_ she offer succor to his people when she is part of the very reason they are adrift? His blood boils, and he does not realize the edge of his growl until several doboshes after it begins.  
  
The bridge crew are all watching him, rapt and agape, though they pretend they are not. The commander stands at attention, dutifully reciting all relevant facts, describing the efforts to evacuate the planet and preserve cultural artifacts after the paladins' order came.  
  
( _At least, he supposes with a bitterness too acrid to actually feel, it is something to be said that Alfor bothered to_ evacuate _his people first._ )  
  
He does not ask what became of himself. He does not ask how he ( _they_ ) died. The memories are close enough now that he can imagine, but he still will not hear it, not here, not now, not when an entire bridge crew is listening, their minds already turned to rumor.  
  
When he has heard all he can bear, he strides from the bridge without a word. None dare follow, except for one.  
  
She had lingered far back while he spoke to the commander, but as he passes through the door, she walks close, almost at his side. He slows his pace to accommodate her ( _which, at this point, is pure muscle memory_ ), and takes a route into familiar sections of his ship.  
  
He finds untouched a room that was once, and is again, his private study. It rarely saw use in the decafebes before, only on brief ventures through the star system and beyond, though those trips had dropped off almost entirely with the advent of the lions. It is not an impressive room, its highlight a viewport with a vast, uninterrupted view of the stars, but it is all he needs.  
  
The view, though, cannot quite be called uninterrupted anymore, with bits of asteroid debris drifting slowly past the ship. Beyond, the dark shapes of his fleet loom in and out of the rocky belt, stationed wherever they can find that is in not immediate danger of being crushed by one of the larger passing asteroids.  
  
( _This must be a navigational nightmare._ )  
  
He moves immediately toward the console, but when she enters behind him, lingering a moment in the doorway, she drifts into the empty space before the viewport. He pays her little mind, merely movements in the peripheral, until she drops, almost _falls_ , into a sudden crouch.  
  
He cranes his neck to see her and finds she has become so small that he must rise from the console to do so.  
  
"Are you well?"  
  
She does not reply, does not even shift. Her head is bowed, arms tight around her knees, and she will not respond, no matter what he asks. He knows this last part as truth, but he cannot explain how.  
  
( _I know you now, I knew you before. I knew you in a past life—is that why you are so_ familiar?)  
  
( _You are so different from Honerva. You are so very much like her. You_ are _her..._ )  
  
( _...but you are not. How can it be both?_ )  
  
There is nothing more he can do. He takes his seat and returns to pulling up reports.  
  
And then he tries. He _tries_ —he wills himself to focus, but what he reads slips through his mind and the bare facts that do stick spin in dizzying circles. His growl returns, low and raw in the back of his throat. He cannot restrain it, and he would not if he could. It is a sharp, blessed release to let his simmering anger trickle out somehow.  
  
But this anger, this _emotion_. This is not something new—he has always been wary of letting temper rule. If he is not mindful, it clouds his thoughts, restricts his judgment. He cannot think, he cannot decide. He is useless like this. But what else _can_ he be?  
  
He stands, bracing his hands against the edge of the desk, and _breathes_. It does not help. He stalks to the wide viewport, almost close enough to lay his forehead against it, and tries to let the view of the stars numb him, as it had long ago, so many times before, when he was a paladin and his lion knew too well how to comfort him.  
  
( _He is not a paladin anymore. He can only be a paladin if there are five, but there are not. There is only one, and he must reclaim what is rightfully his._ )  
  
( _And it was not so long ago. It has barely been a month._ )  
  
The stars are no help either, nothing able to soothe him. After only a dobosh, he lowers his head and retreats, stepping back until he is roughly even with the small form on the study floor. A pause, and he takes a chance in drawing nearer. She does not react.  
  
Something of her forlorn, muted posture strikes a bitter chord in him, almost ironic, and he sinks to the floor beside her, adopting nearly the exact position—( _she must know well how to deal with misery, after all_ )—and lowering his head to his folded arms.  
  
_Stars,_ but he aches. Not physically, as actual death seems to have done little against his health—( _if anything, he feels stronge_ r)—but... his home is _gone_. Everything is _gone_. It stings like failure, and he does not know how to make it right, even for all he knows he needs to.  
  
He cannot say what alerts him, perhaps the subtle awareness of eyes on him, but he blinks, lifting his head. She is watching him. Her eyes are weary but keen, and her small hand rests too lightly to feel on his arm. He must stare at her, silent and dumbfounded, for too long, because her gaze turns hunted and flits away. She removes her hand.  
  
_I am sorry,_ he wants to say. But for what?  
  
He drops his head to his arms again, but this time he angles it to watch her. She is still just as coiled and drawn as before, but now her head is lifted to the sight of the stars and something... something seems _better_.  
  
He has gotten his wish—all his rage and fury has fled, and now he is just numb. Just a shell. Just a ghost with empty memories.  
  
"I can feel everything."  
  
He blinks, raising his head just a fraction. She does not turn her gaze from the stars as she speaks, but he watches her all the same.  
  
"The... universe. The stars, the planets. The lives. There are more than eighty-five thousand Galra in this area of space alone. I can feel... all of it."  
  
A slow, fractioned lowering of her head, as though movement itself is strange to her now. She pulls farther inward, returning much to what she was before, but she finishes, "That is what troubles me."  
  
_Oh._ There is something akin to wonder in him. "How can you feel it?"  
  
A small, jerky hitch of her shoulders. "I hear it, I see it... It is like a touch, or like something that has no name."  
  
"It... troubles you."  
  
Her eyes, for all the weariness within, find his, unimpressed and narrowed. ( _She had never liked redundancy. She still does not._ )  
  
But then she turns to the stars again. The silence becomes heavy, burgeoning, as though she is yearning to say something.  
  
Her lips part several ticks before she pushes the question through them. "Do you know what quintessence is?"  
  
His heart stops, just for a tick. "Yes."  
  
"That is what it is. The quintessence in everything. I do not remember ever feeling it before."  
  
"You did not."  
  
She casts him a look, one he cannot quite read. Wary? Warning, certainly. _Resistant._  
  
He has overstepped a boundary. She does not _want_ to remember. ( _Or at least, she does not want to hear it from him._ )  
  
A perplexing idea, and he mulls it over with furrowed brows. He had not considered before that she would not, only that perhaps it would be unwise to offer. But it is her choice, and he will defend that choice even from his own selfish whims.  
  
Very well. He looks away for a tick, deliberately submitting to this.  
  
She admits, after a pause, "I cannot stop feeling it."  
  
"Do you wish to?"  
  
No reply.  
  
He glances back and reads the answer in her eyes: _Of course._ But then she blinks, hesitates, and surprises herself.  
  
"No."  
  
It is the truth.  
  
Once, he might have smiled, but now he only lets the feeling curl wryly, pleasedly within: _You were always chasing quintessence. Its secrets, its power._  
  
_Do you remember_ that?  
  
Perhaps he ought not to ask, but there is another way he can phrase it, merely broaching the topic: "You asked if I know quintessence. I do. I know it well."  
  
"Then you know what can be done with it. The potential it holds."  
  
"Yes."  
  
( _He remembers..._ light. _And life, so potent it burned._ )  
  
( _He remembers hope. He remembers fear._ )  
  
( _Then he remembers nothing._ )  
  
"I know what it can do," he says.  
  
"I... there are things it can do that I do _not_ remember." A glance. "Things I know now, not things I have forgotten. With this sense comes ability, knowledge. I can manipulate it."  
  
His heart skips another beat. ( _Is it looking to give out on him again?_ )  
  
"Perhaps that is my purpose," she says. "What I am meant for. To change _everything_ with this."  
  
_Perhaps your purpose is simply to_ be.  
  
But she is not interesting in mere _existence_. She wants to make certain of who she is, to find that out at last, because she woke up not knowing and that must be a lonely, haunting thing.  
  
But that _ambition,_ that _drive..._  
  
_Honerva,_ he thinks, but that is not her name anymore.  
  
_Once, twice, a thousand times, you promised me your work would change everything. And it did._  
  
"I will provide any support you require," he says.  
  
And now he looks to the stars, past the loose fragments of the Dalterion Belt.  
  
_The stars,_ he thinks. _And the planets. Quintessence. Everything._  
  
_Trigel. Gyrgan. Blaytz._  
  
(With each name, something dark and hot and angry builds in his chest.)  
  
_Alfor._  
  
_Voltron._ (His lion.) _Trans-reality material. The rift._  
  
_Quintessence._  
  
He may be numb, he may be little more than a shell, but he is an emperor still. He is a _leader_. He is _Zarkon,_ and now he knows what he must do.  
  
( _...Quintessence._ )


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly have no idea how I got this done so quickly, but here you go.
> 
> A few more lines of dialogue are taken from the episode.

He keeps the knowledge of his return contained. Thanks to several circumspect officers and the further influence of his orders, the only ones beyond them who will learn their emperor lives are the ones who stumble across him in the halls. He has frightened many of the ship's crew this way, but then quiet rumor must spread and they no longer seem so startled, only shocked, only awed. ( _"It's true!"_ )  
  
The occasional civilians he sees, however... a pair of merchant-class twins, an elderly warrior, a tired parent with a tiny kit...  
  
He must be quick about his plans. Civilians, especially, will not keep secrets for long.  
  
He gives himself the night to set his thoughts in order. For a more solid metaphor of what he is planning, he sets up the holo-chess table in the corner of his quarters; he does not play, as he finds that simply aligning the pieces helps him to think better. The tiles become planets, the knights and hunters his enemies...  
  
In his absence, no drastic changes have been made to his quarters aboard the ship. Though it has been decafebes since last he occupied them, the room still stirs a kind of comfortable familiarity. When he enters, the exhaustion kept at bay finally catches up to him, so potent it stops him where he stands. He craves _rest_. This matter, the entire day—it has tired him beyond belief. He forced himself to stay awake until a passingly-acceptable time to sleep, but now that the chronometer has given him leave, he finally allows himself to retire.  
  
When the door slips shut behind him, he notices the problem. The door had not closed behind _him,_ but behind _her._  
  
She has been trailing him silently ever since they woke, and it only fits that she would follow him here. But the absolute truth settles in, bitterly and wearily, that she will not tolerate being in a bed with him. He has learned enough to know this, even if his strange second-sense of her new self confirms it. ( _That one instance today, in which she was within arm's reach, when she thought to comfort him with a touch—it was rare and never repeated, except when she shrunk closer in the presence of unfamiliar Galra._ )  
  
She will have to be found an alternate place to sleep.  
  
Though she sways on her feet, she does not seem concerned. Perhaps the matter has not even occurred to her, as weary and barely-standing as she is.  
  
"I will have quarters prepared for you if you wish to rest."  
  
She glances up but does not speak.  
  
The other problem: She has refused to be parted from him ( _although he put no great effort into testing this_ ).  
  
"Or you may stay here. Anywhere. Whatever you wish."  
  
Her eyes narrow. This is acceptable to her, and it seems to be some sort of cue, as she ambles off, peering around his room, inspecting the furniture.  
  
He watches, then searches the wardrobe to see if suitable sleep clothes remain. They do, but if not, he would have searched the stacks of crates at the edges of the room. It is unbefitting for his quarters to be so disorganized and cluttered, but stronger than his sense of propriety is the welling gratitude that even when their planet was slated for destruction, their emperor thought dead, his people thought to preserve some of his belongings and store them in the only place they could.  
  
He disappears into the adjoining washroom to change ( _because_ change _is, indeed, the matter at hand. He would not have to do this if she_ remembered him).  
  
When he returns, he scans the room for her robed form and finds her seated between several crates, her back to the wall. She meets his gaze and stands, regarding him from beneath her hood, then turns and palms open a door panel and disappears into a closet he had forgotten was there.  
  
She does not emerge.  
  
...Does she plan to sleep in there?  
  
Something about that strikes him as _wrong,_ a brief stab of pain, but it is not as though he had not offered her proper lodgings. At the same time, that feeling is at war with another, one he cannot explain, one that says _of course_ she would wish to sequester herself in there. It is small, quiet, dark, secure... She will feel safe. ( _And then that stab of pain again. Why does she_ not _feel safe?_ )  
  
(You know why. _She is a stranger to herself, and everything around her is strange._ )  
  
He stands there, his thoughts a dark tumult, then turns for his own bed. He dims the lights, not quite lowering them to full darkness. ( _Honerva complained of being unable to see in their rooms at night, at least until she began to shift her eyes to match Galran photoreceptors for convenience._ )  
  
As exhausted as he is, sleep does not come, not for a long while, and when it does, it is sharp and fitful, and the lingering ghost of terror still haunts him when he wakes.  
  
In the morning, when he rises, he shakes off the last traces of that fear and _plans_.

* * *

  
  
He makes the announcement five quintants after his return, and in five quintants, so much has changed.  
  
On the second quintant, he argues with the quartermaster. He insists that fresh fruits and vegetables be acquired, but the quartermaster dares to tell him—his _emperor_ —that the Galra species is too destitute, the rest of the system bled too dry in their offers of aid for any such luxury.  
  
Zarkon threatens his life, and though this is not something the _old_ Zarkon would have done, the intent is clear and the quartermaster quails. An urgent pod is sent out, crewed by a mid-ranking lieutenant who later regales his fellows with the tale of how he was forced to beg an old, crotchety Rygnirai merchant, bent on his knees in the sand, to please, _please_ sell him fruits and vegetables, because he was not permitted to return home without them.  
  
The food is not for him, and it is not a luxury. Galra may be content to live as carnivores, but Alteans cannot survive on meat alone.  
  
When he presents them to her, she regards them with narrowed eyes, wary of their strangeness. They will taste far better to her than the standard Galran nutrition slabs ( _the processed, synthesized substance that is all the Galra have left, and which, unfortunately, she will still have to eat for the remainder of her nutrients_ ), but she does not know this. When he provides the missing knowledge—that she will succumb to malnutrition if she does not supplement the standard fare—she becomes agreeable enough to consume them.  
  
( _While she sits in a chair beside his, a bowl of small, crunchy roots in her lap, she offers him one. On a whim, he accepts, but she turns away, her gaze dropping, the awkward curl of her hand revealing discomfort with how their fingers had briefly brushed._ )  
  
On the third quintant, it becomes obvious that she will not wear anything but her robes—she outright bares her teeth at his offer to find something else. He sends a clandestine order to the ship's crew then with instructions on fabricating additional copies. Though they will likely not be able to replicate the exact feel of the fabric, their limited supplies should be enough to manage the rest.  
  
When he offers the folded garments to her, she eyes them suspiciously, conducting a thorough inspection for flaws. In the end, she seems almost appreciative of his attention to detail and decides they are acceptable. The sets of identical robes now hang in her closet—( _because it is truly_ hers _now; she has practically colonized it, and she gives him a dully unappreciative look when he again offers her proper quarters_ ).  
  
On the fourth quintant, she gives herself a name.  
  
It is after yet another hopeful, well-meaning officer asks the identity of his trailing companion, likely seeking confirmation of the rumors, that he turns to her in private and almost _begs_ for something to call her. Perched on a chair with her legs pulled up, she allows him to debate suggestions back and forth, anything from Galran names to Altean ones—( _though she refuses all of those, fire in her eyes. She may remember her species, but she also remembers the planet she called_ home _and who took it from her. She will not suffer to be called Altean anymore_ ).  
  
Beyond that, they devolve simply into _words_ —concepts, titles, archaisms. She spends half a varga alone listening to him recite words from ancient Galran languages. She remembers Standard Galran—still speaks it perfectly, despite that she cannot recall when she learned it to spite the translators—but older words have vanished entirely from her memory.  
  
She does not choose a name then. It is only later, when he is on the bridge between one report and the next, that she shifts close enough to whisper, _"Haggar."_  
  
A glance down at her; he nods quietly, and that is that.  
  
Even now, five quintants later, she is still following him everywhere, though she never speaks to anyone and avoids drawing attention. Despite her small presence, there are a great many who remember the Emperor's wife—( _she was well-loved, after all_ )—and recall that there were, in fact, two deceased bodies aboard the ship. He corrects them harshly—( _"That is_ Haggar _,"_ )—and though they do not understand, they learn.  
  
( _Haggar, for her part, never thinks to ask what the name_ Honerva _means. Or perhaps she simply does not want to._ )  
  
Regardless, her presence at his side is constant and unquestioned, and when at last he puts his plans into motion and announces the future of this system to its inhabitants, she is beside him as he speaks. She is out of sight of the transmission, but he can feel her attention on him, and the small fidget to her fingers means she is _thinking_.  
  
"King Alfor of Altea has destroyed our planet," he says to his people, and promises ruin.  
  
"Rise up and join your emperor!"  
  
And they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm relating to Haggar so hard in this chapter. Closets are great when you're stressed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's interesting to me to plot out the slow change between Haggar now, with her still-settling sense of self and her makeshift coping mechanisms, to the Haggar of the future we all know and love. Thirteen or fourteen chapters total, by my current estimate. We'll get there.
> 
> In other news, this chapter was a nightmare and I'm still not entirely satisfied with it, but getting it done is the only way I get to move on to other chapters.

She only stands to be parted from him when he gives her a lab.  
  
His ship, like all standard Imperial vessels, hosts a moderately-sized science department, though nothing of the caliber Honerva was used to back on Daibazaal. Still, it feels _right_ to have her in a lab again, and from the way she follows closely, quickly behind him as he enters, she feels the same.  
  
"Out," he says.  
  
The scientists in the lab whirl and straighten, fumbling salutes. "E-Emperor!"  
  
" _Out._ This space is no longer yours. It is being repurposed."  
  
Though stricken, they know well enough to file out when he moves pointedly from the doorway, leaving their work half-finished on counters.  
  
_"Linger outside,"_ he murmurs to them as they pass. "I may have a different assignment for you."  
  
The last he sees of them before the door snaps shut is a miserable, bewildered gaggle of lab uniforms and the beginnings of speculative whispering.  
  
"Will this suit your needs?" he asks.  
  
Haggar steps further into the room, tilting her head as she examines it. "It will do... The equipment is all wrong. You will be able to provide substitutes?"  
  
"Whatever you require."  
  
Slowly, she walks along one of the counters, craning her neck to peer at an abandoned culture dish. The counter comes roughly to the height of her chest.  
  
"I will prepare a list of what I need," she tells him. "Some of it will likely be... _esoteric._ "  
  
"That is fine."  
  
He knew every piece of Honerva's old equipment, almost as well as she did. Long hours spent in her lab, evenings turned from conversation to passing her whatever she needed, then working side-by-side in companionable silence... ( _He knew they underestimated him. He was merely the Emperor, merely a benefactor and benefiter of her work._ No. _He knew it well, by far enough to keep up with her, though it was never_ his.)  
  
"The former occupants of this lab, the scientists outside—do you want them for assistants? They may prove useful."  
  
She considers this, tilting her head, but her gaze says she is undecided.  
  
"They will be waiting if you need them."  
  
A nod.  
  
Turning, Haggar peers around the lab, stepping close to another counter, touching her fingertips to it. There is something strange, something almost wanting, in her demeanor, and he does not understand it until he considers the meeting he has scheduled after this. ( _It stops him cold._ )  
  
"...Do you wish to stay?"  
  
She nods, meeting his gaze. Her shoulders have stiffened, her countenance stilled. Some part of her is afraid, loathe to remain here while he goes.  
  
She clings to stability, to what is familiar. _Nothing_ is familiar to her at this point, but he supposes he has made himself the closest thing. ( _He does not hope, anymore, that a part of her memory still lingers, that some actual, subconscious bond is what ties her._ )  
  
_Very well._  
  
"I intend to be on the bridge or in my study for the day. I will return before the evening meal." And with that, a brief assurance veiled in parting remarks, he does all he can—he gives her what she needs and leaves her.  
  
She roots herself visibly to the floor and does not stray after him as he goes, but watches with unhappily narrowed eyes.  
  
In the corridor outside, he says to the wary, gathered scientists, "Remain here until you are summoned." They, too, watch him as he leaves, but he says no more.  
  
His own eyes are narrowed as he goes. More that he is willing to admit, it is nearly just as difficult for him to walk away from that lab.

* * *

  
  
From then on, she spends her days in her laboratory. He provides what equipment can be found and commissions the rest from stressed, overworked suppliers who insist _the fleet is too destitute to provide this on a whim._ He does not accept their complaints and makes clear that he will replace any who hesitate to do as he orders.  
  
Haggar, in the meantime, takes on a habit very reminiscent of Honerva. ( _For all they are different, they are still the same._ ) The existence of holopads has revolutionized her, especially the ones with access to the Galran networks, and now she spends much of her free time reading, studying. ( _The entirety of the Galran networks had been preserved from Daibazaal, the servers transferred onto ships and moved to temporary housings on one of Rygnirath's moons. Generously-provided amplification technology allows the scattered Galra people to connect to it from anywhere within the system._ )  
  
This soon becomes a constant: When he retires in the evening, no matter how early or how late, she will always be in his ( _their?_ ) quarters before him, a holopad in her hands, reading. Finding where she has chosen to perch or curl that night becomes an interesting challenge. In chairs, between crates, behind furniture—she could be _anywhere,_ though she is almost always within sight of the door.  
  
He steps in, and... _there,_ on a crate by her closet.  
  
She glances up. Something, some clue in her demeanor, tells him it will be some time before she pries herself away to dine with him, but she gives a him small, cursory nod, as usual. Her standard greeting.  
  
And as always, she says, "Sire."  
  
_Sire._ The first time he heard it from her, the weight of the word settled into his chest like a stone. The address was logical, of course. Others called him this—and _lord,_ and _Emperor,_ and _sir_ —and she assumed she ought to as well. She has no way of knowing what she means to him, and he cannot tell her, because that would tread directly into what they have agreed to avoid. ( _"I am Haggar," she said once, when he tentatively broached_ why. _He supposes that must be explanation enough._ )  
  
( _She is too busy building a new life to worry about the old one._ )  
  
He nods a greeting of his own and removes his helm. "What are you reading?"  
  
She does not look up from her holopad, but she answers, "A comparison of methods of particle barrier generation."  
  
The answer is different each time, and it is not always so advanced and scientific. He wonders, then, but keeps to himself the question of just how much beyond her immediate life she had forgotten. If she could not recall her own dietary needs, how much more of the universe is she learning anew? It could be her natural intellectual tendencies making themselves known, but the way she studies with such rapt vigor, such open eagerness... he would almost say she is healing something in herself, if he was not loathe to think of it as _broken._  
  
It is only twenty doboshes later that she sets her holopad aside and comes to eat. This does not try his patience, as it is impossible for nutrition slabs to grow cold or stale, and her fruits will be just as fresh as they were before. And... it is reassuring. For all she will call him _sire,_ she is apparently not concerned enough with his station to avoid keeping him waiting. ( _Honerva certainly was not, at least not once she realized he was visiting her not as an emperor, but as something different._ )  
  
As they dine, he finds himself in good spirits, which is more than can be said for most quintants. She offers him a vegetable again, and he accepts it, though he will not take a fruit, as it is beyond his comprehension how she can enjoy something so sweet.  
  
After the meal, she once again capitulates to habit and drags a large blanket out of her closet, wrapping herself in it with her holopad to read. ( _She is fond of her habits, he has learned._ ) Giving her the blanket was the correction of a grievous oversight; it had been his fault that she was without one, as she had refused them coldly on the first nights and he had neglected to offer beyond that. After the second time he wandered into his room to catch her in his bed, his own blankets draped over her shoulders, he had finally realized the problem. ( _She immediately stood and removed herself, her expression suggesting she was refusing to feel guilt rather than being truly free of it. He did not begrudge her the comfort, for all she seemed to expect he might, even if the sight of it touched on memories he was trying to keep buried._ )  
  
She was still resistant to the idea when he offered again, but after he finally draped the blanket over her while she slept, he saw that it disappeared into her closet, and from then on she could be found wrapped comfortably in it around his quarters. ( _He offered her pillows, too, but those sat unused outside the closet until he finally reclaimed them._ )  
  
When he disappears into the washroom that evening to exchange his armor for sleep clothes, he knows what he will find when he emerges.  
  
Anywhere is acceptable for her to sleep now, no longer just the closet. ( _Perhaps she is feeling safer._ ) He finds her curled in corners, leaned against the side of chairs, or perhaps sitting in one, her holopad tucked close to her chest as though she had dozed off in the midst of reading.  
  
He offered her proper quarters again, several times, or at least a proper bed, but she refused. He asked her, "Are you not uncomfortable?"  
  
She gave him an odd look. "No."  
  
But this time, when he emerges to a darkened room—( _she turns off the lights now, and turns them to full dark_ )—he finds that she has simply curled up in the middle of the floor, the blanket still trailing from when she had wandered over.  
  
He draws close, his footsteps disturbing her enough that she lifts her head. As he stands over her, something like amusement masks over that ever present jag of _concern_.  
  
"The offer for more appropriate lodgings still remains." He will blame the late hour for the curl of warmth in his voice. ( _She likely will not notice it._ )  
  
She blinks glowing eyes, her brows furrowing as though words are foreign to her now. "...Not yet," she mutters at last, triumphant with her success at speech, and lays her head back down.  
  
She falls back asleep then, but he is held in place by the realization that _not yet_ means _someday,_ and that sometime in the future he will not have her comforting, unfamiliar presence to greet him in his rooms.  
  
The silence seems total. The solitude he imagines is heavy.  
  
All things must come to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the fact that the Galran equivalent of the Internet was preserved means that they still have their memes. They may have lost thousands of years of cultural and planetary history—artifacts, architecture, geography, whatever the equivalent of squirrels on Daibazaal was—but at least they have their memes. (This isn't much of a comfort to them, for understandable reasons.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have enough emotions about Haggar on a good day, but this chapter made me really sad when I was writing it. She is suffering...
> 
> At least we finally get a look at what's been going on in her head.
> 
> And then Zarkon has to butt in for some angst of his own at the end, because apparently I can't resist tormenting him (though [spoiler redacted] also makes me incredibly sad in that scene).

Sleep eludes her.  
  
Sleep often eludes her, but it holds no interest anyway. Not anymore, not to her. She no longer needs it. Those first nights, what feels like so long ago, there was little she could do but curl in the dark and let her mind go blank, but now her limbs are too filled with coiled energy to sleep more than once every few quintants and her nights are fraught with restless boredom.  
  
She is loathe to leave the room, for all she knows she can. No longer is she so _dependent_ that she cannot part from her emperor's side, and she hates that she once was, but... the room is dark, and it is comforting. The sound of his sleep-slowed breathing is constant. The universe still sings, still _rages_ just beyond the boundaries of her mind, and though she is painfully, painstakingly learning to close herself off from it, it is so _loud,_ and she does not relish the thought of brighter hallways, the motions of patrols, the sting of eyes on her. ( _She is watched when she goes, though they try to hide it. Is it her appearance, the way she does not look quite Galra?_ )  
  
She paces, though, craves the motion just to stabilize her mind. When she can bear it, she curls in the closet so the glow of her holopad will not disturb as she studies. The rest of the night, when she cannot even manage that, she mills and paces the boundaries of the bedchamber like they are a cage, never mind that it is one of her own making.  
  
She has learned to keep her footsteps light and quiet, and she knows how to manage wandering in the dark. Her eyes adapt to it easily—she has read about this. Galran eyes prefer the dim-dark of twilight, and with only the guide-lights on, that is what this is.  
  
She does not understand why _her_ eyes prefer it. She is not Galra—she knows this.  
  
She is an enigma, and it rankles.  
  
Skirting around a large crate ( _and why are these here?_ ), she slows her footsteps to a halt. Always, she takes pains to avoid the sight of the figure in the bed, something about the vulnerability of it abhorrent to her—( _he sleeps in her presence_ )—but... no one will see, no one will know, if now her eyes are drawn to him.  
  
_Who_ are _you?_  
  
His face is little more than an angular outline in the dark, and she studies it with an openness unbefitting her, one she could not manage to summon during the day. His breathing is calm, the rise and fall of his chest slow. He does not dream, or if he does, for once it is pleasant.  
  
Who are you? she wonders again. And why are you so kind to me?  
  
Emperor Zarkon cannot be described as _kind._ He is cunning, brutal, efficient. Strategic, decisive, unforgiving of failure. ( _Will she fail him one day? What then?_ )  
  
But to her, he is _uncharacteristic_. What kind of emperor offers his own quarters to a wayward stranger, tolerating her wary silences and her baleful looks, acquiescent enough to simply let her be when she needs it? He is kind, and he is forgiving, and she _does not understand_.  
  
_Why?_ she thinks at his unwary, sleeping form. _Who are you? What am I to you?_  
  
_...Why have I felt so safe with you, ever since the beginning? What made me trust you before I even knew you?_  
  
_Why do I feel like you know me? Why do I feel like I know you?_  
  
This is what besets her long, restless nights—a curse of questions that will haunt her until they vanish with the dawn of day. She will become Haggar again, then, and she will wonder about quintessence and science and not the ghosts of emotions that have no name. She will serve her lord tirelessly, because her loyalty to him is the one thing she cannot question, and she will content herself with simply _being._ That will be enough, then.  
  
_Why?_ she wonders again, her eyes narrowed, but the question hurts her. She drops her gaze to the floor and focuses only on the sound of his breathing instead.  
  
Pacing again—back and forth, around the crates—for as long at it takes until she can sit and read, or if not that, until morning comes and she can begin anew.  
  
Just three more vargas, by the chronometer. She tries not to think until then.

 

* * *

  
"Work continues as planned." She takes a rare moment to relax the rigid curl of her shoulders, leaning her elbows on the table and dragging a hand through the hair beneath her hood. Her legs are tucked under her, despite that the stool makes this uncomfortable, as every piece of furniture here is simply too _large_ to be sat on properly.  
  
"Were the samples adequate?"  
  
She is loathe to insult her lord's generosity or the pains of his efforts—as without him, she would not have any samples, would not have _this_ —but it is not in her nature to shade the truth or soften it.  
  
"Adequate." They were. They were also paltry, meager substitutes for the strength of what she ( _somehow, barely_ ) remembers. Where did she obtain those samples? When did she study them? That knowledge is gone, but she can recall their brightness, their power. Their potential.  
  
There is so much, though, that she does not remember. It is... _disconcerting._  
  
Spinning the stool around, she unfolds her legs and more drops to the floor than actually stands. On her way to a small cluster of equipment, she passes by her lord; he is a rather out-of-place figure here, all armor and grandeur in the midst of scanners and glass vials. The weight of his gaze follows her as she goes. She ignores it, ignores all else, and studies the devices; they are performing as expected... or at least, so she believes.  
  
A harsh sigh restrained; much of what she does here is based on instinct alone. Her mind and these strange, new senses of hers suggest routes for her to take, unlikely paths between ideas, and despite it all she follows them. Some part of her must know her previous research, as she is never led astray. Still, as she dutifully records the results gleaned from her experiments, there comes with it an odd, not entirely pleasant feeling—the incongruity of making additional notes on what she already knows to be fact but knows equally well she has not truly _discovered,_ the fragments her mercurial memory provides when, by chance, a discovery trails further back into knowledge forgotten. ( _She is too stubborn to accept it as truth, though, not until she has subjected it to a rigorous battery of tests. But as always, her nonexistent memory proves unfailing, and no part of it ever returns false._ )  
  
...Will she someday come to remember the rest like this? Will something remind her, and then suddenly a part that was missing will return? The thought unsettles her, but she cannot escape it. That imagined moment picks at her mind with growing dread, the idea that what she is, _who_ she is, all she has built, will be torn asunder in an instant by the realization that it was all false, that the entire time she was someone she did not know, someone she _still_ will not know, not entirely, because she will still be Haggar... unless Haggar will disappear and she will, once again, cease to exist.  
  
( _She does not want to disappear._ )  
  
Blinking, she narrows her eyes, a cursory attempt at ridding herself of these thoughts. They do not treat her well. But it is no good—some matters cannot be banished by mere wanting alone. Her one consolation is that with her back to her lord, he cannot see the quiet, troubled stillness that has surely taken over her face.  
  
Her head lowered, she retrieves a datapad from a counter. Though she is hesitant to draw too close ( _as she does not wish to offend_ ), she approaches her lord and offers it.  
  
"I have compiled my latest results, a more detailed study on the different properties of the quintessence samples. They are deeply varied, and in a variety of ways." Talking about her work, as ever, seems to buoy her, to quell the tumult of her mind and quiet the roaring of the universe. _That_ is what banishes those thoughts—distraction and purpose. A void can only be erased by filling it.  
  
He accepts the datapad, and when she glances up, he is watching it with interest though it is not even powered on.  
  
"I will review it," he says. "You will discuss it with me over dinner?"  
  
"...Yes." It is odd to her, taking her meals with the Emperor of the entire Galra people, though he expects no formality from her, does not even expect her to speak.  
  
It should not be so strange, she thinks, when she still retreats to his quarters every night to sleep ( _or try to_ ), when there lives between them in the dark a familiarity she cannot name during the day. She does not want to name it, almost. This strange accord they share does not trouble her. ( _The opposite, in fact._ ) It is merely... _dissonance._  
  
Her entire life is dissonance now, and only the dark and quiet of a crowded closet can solve it.  
  
She must move again, restless; she must have something to _do._ Her hands find purpose in rearranging a collection of samples, her attention turned briefly toward analysis, to categorizing and preparing the samples for the next sequence of tests. As she does, the ghost of something still nags and pulls at her mind. It is the ( _most likely_ ) imagined sensation of memory taunting its way into her reach, and while she knows it will vanish if she turns to grasp it, if she overcomes her resistance and gives in to the urge to simply _know,_ it still hovers at the edges of her senses, pressing and pulling...  
  
She does not want to remember, but the knowledge that what she has forgotten still _is,_ still _was,_ still left its mark on the universe... that haunts her. She does not want to know, but what else will quiet the dread that what she has forgotten is _important?_  
  
Her hands still over the containment cylinders.  
  
"...Sire?"  
  
Though she does not want to, she asks. She must know, and he is the only one who can tell her. He is the arbiter of her memory now, and she almost hates him for that. ( _But she does not, because she could never hate him._ )  
  
"There are things I am not remembering," she says. "Many things."  
  
A pause. "Yes."  
  
"Are they things I need to know?"  
  
He does not reply. For so long is he silent that she turns and peers up at him, dread growing within her chest, but when his response comes it is a relief, a comfort she had not dared to hope for, and a coiled fear within her relaxes.  
  
"...No."

* * *

  
  
It is late. He ought to finish, to close down his console and retire, but he does not.  
  
The starfield beyond his study—( _no longer interrupted by asteroids, as his command ship relocated once the attacks on the Dalterion Belt began_ )—appears exactly the same whether morning or night, but somehow it feels late now, and the chronometer concurs.  
  
_Soon._ Soon, he will sleep, but for now there is another matter to occupy his attention.  
  
The holo-screen glows faintly before him, as it has for nearly half a varga now, but he does not interact with it. Fingers laced before him, he merely watches the lines of text scroll and grow, much in the same way one might watch the throes of a particularly disgusting insect.

> **Alfor:** Please.  
>  **Alfor** : Please, Zarkon. Just answer me.  
>  **Alfor:** I know you are getting this. The messages would not be going through if you weren't.  
>  **Alfor:** Zarkon.

It seems, after many quintants of Zarkon ignoring the attempts of his erstwhile allies to contact him through official means, Alfor has finally resorted to one more personal. This messaging utility is meant for—( _and was once used by_ )— _friends,_ but it seems Alfor has not quite grasped that he is no longer one of those. If he had, he would not be pleading so _desperately._

> **Alfor:** Please, Zarkon.  
>  **Alfor:** Trigel is not happy with your warships attacking her outer colonies.  
>  **Alfor** : Which, honestly, is understandable, but now she is preparing to send her warships to strike back, and if we go down that route, there will be no turning back.  
>  **Alfor** : Please, Zarkon, I know something is wrong. Just let us help you.

_Pathetic._ What is even worse is that he can picture Alfor as he once was, curled in bed with a holopad late at night when he cannot sleep, pestering Zarkon if Daibazaal's capitol was aligned to daytime, sometimes even if it was not.

But now Daibazaal is gone, and that is not the Alfor of today. This one is more likely still clad in decorated armor, pacing around an Altean war room, the lines on his face deepened by worry and exhaustion.

Zarkon does not want to picture it. He _hates_ that he can still imagine Alfor's face so clearly, the way it turns _sad and worried_ when Alfor wishes to meddle in matters that do not concern him, thinking himself _altruistic—_

He moves abruptly, his claw tapping the input panel.

> **Alfor:** Zarkon.  
>  **Alfor:** Please.  
>  **Zarkon:** Do you really believe I would ever think you more than a traitor? More than a _destroyer?_  
>  **Zarkon:** You play at friendship, but you are a monster. I see that now.  
>  **Zarkon:** My losses will be avenged, Alfor. My people will thrive, and I will have Voltron.  
>  **Alfor:** Zarkon.  
>  **Alfor:** Zarkon please will you just talk to me?  
>  **Alfor:** Just promise me we can talk  
>  **Alfor:** Just  
>  **Alfor:** give me _five doboshes._  
>  **Alfor:** Even just that.  
>  **Alfor:** We are so worried. So hurt and angry and worried, Zarkon, what happened to you?  
>  **Alfor:** How are you even alive? I _mourned_ you.

This repulsive display carries on, one line of text after another, and he is almost too disgusted to respond. His eyes narrow. Is he supposed to believe this?

> **Zarkon:** You can strengthen the forces around Altea all you want, but it will not make a difference.  
>  **Zarkon:** You know what will come for you. You know what you have earned.  
>  **Zarkon:** Surrender will always be an option, but your outcome has already been decided.  
>  **Alfor:** Zarkon  
>  **Zarkon:** Do not contact me again, Alfor. Regret your actions while you still have time.

He closes out of the entire system, whatever reply Alfor may have been devising lost to the void, where it belongs. He leans over his desk, clamping his eyes shut and rubbing at them with not nearly enough mind paid for his claws.

He is _exhausted._

That is the way of it now. Sometimes he can barely think, but sometimes he is too invigorated to sleep, and other times his body craves rest but he will deny it _just a varga more,_ because the dreams that come to him will make it moot anyway.

He rarely remembers the dreams, just the fear and the ache in his chest when he wakes. Sometimes, when he does recall an image, it is Alfor walking away, the red of his paladin armor fading into darkness. Zarkon begs him to come back, because this dream-self still thinks Alfor a friend, but Alfor does not listen and the darkness swallows them both.

Sometimes he dreams of light instead—he dreams of _dying._ His subconscious must remember it somehow, and it paints the picture for him while he sleeps. There is pain written into every fragment, every broken shard, but he does not truly hurt, does not feel himself being torn apart even as he _hopes._ It is silent, devoid of sound, of all sensation, like a video running on mute. Dying is soothing. It is calming. These dreams are a comfort, or the closest thing, no matter that when he wakes ( _the image of his hand reaching for Honerva's the very last thing_ ) he jolts up in bed and swears he _cannot breathe..._

( _Haggar stood there, peering at him, while he sat and clutched at his chest, claws catching on his nightshirt. He only looked back at her, wordless and numb, and wondered,_ Do you dream like this? What haunts _you_ while you sleep? _And then the realization that he_ was _breathing finally came through and he fell back onto the mattress, drained and exhausted, and could do nothing but stare blankly into the darkness until at last he fell asleep again._ )

Thinking about dreaming is no excuse to delay it. Now that his ill-timed distraction is gone, his study holds nothing more for him this evening. He stands from his desk and departs, the halls devoid of all but sentry patrols on the short walk to his quarters.

Haggar blinks at him when he enters, lowering her holopad straight away, her brows drawn. She does not offer her usual greeting this time, but he would not be inclined to respond to it if she did; he can barely motivate himself to speak as they eat, and after a point he simply stops trying. ( _Thank the stars nutrition slabs cannot suffer from being left unattended for vargas._ ) She hardly looks away from him the entire time, picking the food from her plate without even seeing it, the keenness of her gaze belying she is studying him, but he cannot understand why. He contemplates asking her what she finds so interesting, but that is a little too caustic, a little too unkind, and he does not begrudge her this, truly.

He is merely tired.

When at last he changes into his sleep clothes and retires, he emerges from the washroom to the sight of her perched on a chair, watching him as he climbs into bed.

"Sleep well, sire," she murmurs, her eyes piercing the dark, her brows still furrowed.

A pause—( _he does not quite know what to make of this_ )—but he simply nods and lies back, drawing the covers around him. His eyes fall closed, weariness already pulling him down...

He keeps those words close in his mind as he drifts off— _sleep well, sire_ —but it does him no good. He does not sleep well that night.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A change, a resurfacing tendency toward obsession, and a step toward the future. This chapter was kind of disheartening to write, but note the new tag: There will be a happy ending to this! But until then, enjoy your angst!
> 
> (And man, I thought chapter five was hard to write... It had _nothing_ on this one. I hope you all didn't think this fic was abandoned! And please forgive any stylistic inconsistencies in this chapter—anything written and rewritten over the course of several months is bound to have a few!)

Haggar's lab extends into the room adjacent, the previously-sealed access corridor now left permanently open. At her request, Zarkon grants her quarters adjoining it, though that necessitates converting what was once an old storage room into what, to his mind, is a poor excuse for lodgings. Nevertheless, he finds some measure of satisfaction when she visibly brightens upon first seeing the finished chamber ( _but it should not hurt so much that she is happy to finally have her own space_ ).  
  
This seals the lab as firmly _her domain,_ a private territory, and she tells him she has no more need for her assistants ( _what little use they were, as they spent most of their time banished morosely to the hall_ ). They are permanently reassigned—to cargo management, as there is no additional lab space for them to ply their true expertise. He will hear no complaints; with the Empire's current situation, the management of supply shipments is vital. They will survive the change in career.  
  
After that, he sees much less of Haggar, though every day he goes to her lab to hear her reports. It is no lie when he tells her that what she does is vital. Already she has discovered so much, turning her attention less to the fundamental nature of quintessence and more to its practical applications. One evening, when she finally agrees to join him for a meal again—( _she takes hers in her lab now, vegetables and all_ )—she spends several vargas discussing her ideas for a new energy infrastructure. Her eyes are almost alight as she speaks of it, and that is... _different_ from when she was Honerva. Honerva's eyes lit up, too, but it was not quite like this. Not quite the same. It is too slight to describe, too fleeting to find a word for why it draws his eye, why it settles something in his heart ( _and heals it before it can hurt_ ), but some aspect of this is all Haggar's own.  
  
It is almost a wonder, but he does not give himself time to think on it.  
  
Soon, Haggar asks his permission to begin to a new project—or, more accurately, she preempts it and asks to steal it from whichever team he would have assigned it. The project is nothing less than the arduous task of selecting the new planets in which to place the future of his species—the sites for a series of colonies that will someday become new homeworlds for the Galra. ( _Nothing can ever replace Daibazaal, but neither can anything bring back a species that withers in the void of space. They must move on, they must rebuild, no matter what they lost._ )  
  
"When our work in this system is complete," Haggar says, her brows angled in focus, "we must be prepared to move on. Allow me to assist. I have studied the fields of colony development, xenobiology, and planetary science, and I can, if nothing else, _aid_ in the process of assessing potential colony worlds." ( _Her tone suggests she does not wish to merely_ aid, _and that is familiar—familiar enough to bring a tick of warmth to his chest. After a point, Honerva preferred to do everything she reasonably could by herself, and though she did finally acquiesce to a need for delegation, that old tendency of hers seems to have blossomed to excess in Haggar._ )  
  
He grants her permission, of course. She has not had nearly the time to study these topics as his Galra scientists have had ( _their entire careers devoted to it, though said scientists may not even be aboard his fleet for him to draw upon, instead left adrift somewhere in refugee camps on Rygnirath or Nalquod_ ), but he knows better than to think she would overestimate her abilities for pride or glory. She is capable, and she is a genius. She is Haggar, and he trusts her.  
  
His people's future will be in good hands.

* * *

  
  
The last traces of his dream fade away, and with a feeling like falling in reverse, his body twists itself upright, his breath coming in ragged pants, muscles coiled in arms and legs that know they must move but cannot remember why or how, his heart beating an almost painful rhythm against his side. A breath, dragged in... and slowly, it floods out again. His gaze sharpens now that he realizes he is awake, the room settling slowly into view. The panic fades, the instinct to fight slipping from his limbs like water, and his claws unclench from the sheets, pulling with the resistance of tiny punctures left behind.  
  
_By the stars..._  
  
His whole body itches to move, to shake off the remnants of a dream that still holds him too close to terror. He tosses back the covers and rises, his bare soles pressed to the ice of the floor until he can think again.  
  
Why does remember this dream? More often than not, they leave only a void in his memory. Perhaps because this one is old, older than this life, a nightmare from before his death... but what use is it now? Why be afraid? What he feared has come to pass: She _did_ die...  
  
But she came back.  
  
On the far wall, the stark digits of the chronometer glare. _Sleep,_ they seem to whisper, as though he _can,_ like all he needs is a reminder.  
  
But this terror in his dreams... it will not last. It _cannot_ —he forbids it. Soon, he will learn to sleep again— _soundly_ —and this condition will be nothing but a weight to endure until then.  
  
Now, though, what he needs— _craves_ —is _action._ Distraction—an anchor to keep his mind in place, something to bar it from where it ought not tread. And like a memory, like a new kind of dream, her face comes to mind, swimming before the image of her repurposed, shipboard lab.  
  
...How fitting that his thoughts go directly to her, even when he has barely woken... but is it ever any surprise?  
  
The lingering, taut strings of fear finally give way to cool, ragged relief. Strange, _wrong,_ that he would ever be glad of her absence, but _she is not here._ Only recently did he realize the truth of the alternative. It would not have given Honerva pause—she who knew how to mitigate it, and for whom familiarity long ago quelled that dangerous instinct—but Haggar, for all so much of what lies at her heart is the same...  
  
Would her lighter, careful tread startle his sleeping mind? Would an unexpected sound in unfamiliar quarters make him think of danger? When she roamed his rooms at night, somehow she knew to be perfectly silent, but...  
  
_"Never wake a sleeping Galra"_ —the old, cautious maxim—not a Galran turn of phrase, as they find no note in having a mind that, in the fog between wakefulness and sleep, forgets that its predators stayed in the forests and hears danger first and all else second.  
  
His claws curl, pressing into his palms until his mind blanks only to an insistent, _Stop that,_ lest he draw blood. With a grimace, he loosens them and scrubs a hand over his face.  
  
This line of thinking?  
  
It helps _nothing._  
  
( _Was it distraction or sheer foolishness that had him forget the danger these dreams possessed? Pure luck that she had not startled him from sleep? Can it matter anymore, when she sleeps so far away, and—?_ )  
  
The chronometer's digits pierce the dark—0300. The quiet depths of the night. She is not still awake, is she?  
  
The ghost of a growl echoes in his ears, jarring and too loud to bear. _She is awake._ She has been awake _every night_ for the past fifteen quintants—why would that have changed now?  
  
And within that question lies the very seed this dream began with.  
  
He knows not, though perhaps she does, what gives her the ability to stay awake for nights on end. _Quintessence,_ she tells him, but she adds little else. Doubt is beyond him at this point, because trust aside, his observations leave it no room to muster. She may keep the more obvious of her capabilities private, only displayed for his curiosity when she so chooses, but though such times may be rare ( _and couched in almost-excuses of how she has not yet mastered what she wishes to show, how its potential cannot be judged on a mere performance alone_ ), she long since reduced to nothing any capacity for him to question that some strange, new power has taken residence inside her. Her tests report that the quintessence resonance in her cells is higher than any Altean's, just as the concentration in his own ought to be impossible for a Galra.  
  
Something has changed them... but what is one change among many more?  
  
He cannot doubt: Those powers are _real._ She may not test them where he can see, but he catches glimpses as she passes by counters in her lab, the small, absent touches—a brief brush of her fingertips against a vial, but the quintessence inside _responds._  
  
He would almost call it magic. Almost. She seems to inch closer to the word every day, all her other explanations falling flat before the unyielding and the empirical. Quintessence, though, for all its intricacies still capture her mind, is no longer her primary field of study. As Honerva, she had been ( _still is_ ) a genius, but Honerva focused her entire efforts on alchemy. Now Haggar, armed with nothing but a datapad, access to the networks, and as much idle time as she wishes, has reached out and _diversified._ She spoke the truth when she claimed she was well equipped to handle the selection of Galran colony worlds. That knowledge has written itself into her mind by some seemingly-impossible osmosis, and as the project's sole arbiter, she does the work of a dozen Galra. Such a feat should be impossible, yet somehow, perhaps with her prodigious capacity for energy, she manages it...  
  
But still...  
  
While his attention was elsewhere, this habit grew _regular._ She began staying awake far into exhaustion when it suited her, but never had she gone quite so long, never has she ignored that need entirely, not for _fifteen quintants..._ ( _She never pushed harder, longer, the secrets of knowledge always just a little beyond her grasp, whatever she studies too important to look after her own health, so much at stake—_ )  
  
Another growl, harsh and jagged to his own ears. A rush of effort banishes those thoughts beyond the barrier of his consciousness; he builds a wall against their return. Leave them for the dreams. Leave them for the _memories._  
  
But how can he hope to ignore _this?_  
  
Quintants pass, and each one lines her eyes deeper with weariness. Left to roam in the confines of her own mind, her temper grows sharp enough to pierce, and each day he comes to her, guised in the excuse of asking after her progress because neither will accept that perhaps he simply wishes to be near her, but she is not pleased with his presence unless she has something new to report, curling herself over her screens and displays with renewed, heated fervor if she does not. She is limitless, unrelenting, and as simple words, such qualities would be admirable, but... ( _He cannot stop her work now. It is too important._ )  
  
Perhaps worst of all is that each piece of this, every step further into this _pattern_ —she does it for him. For his people. This time, it is not a matter of trying to save his planet from a slow decline, to reach into the very source that destroys it to understand and _use_ it, but to extend some search of promise out into the vastness of the stars and find a new home for what remains of Daibazaal's scattered refugees.  
  
She has always looked after his people and she always will, because the Galra are her people, too. _Their_ people.  
  
His movements only register once he is halfway to the door, still clad in nothing but his sleep clothes. When he _does_ think, he halts himself with an unsteady lurch, his claws scraping the floor as he forcibly reins in his lack of judgment like it is an unruly child. A lifetime of etiquette lessons resurfaces, impressing logic on him like a hand atop his younger self's head ( _and even after so many decaphoebs, he can almost hear his_ arav _'s scolding tone_ ): He must behave as befits an emperor at all times. Lack of sleep is no excuse for impulsive behavior. He must control himself if he is to be worthy of the title he bears.  
  
...And though he is almost too tired to feel shame, he will not suffer the indignity of his subjects witnessing their emperor stalking through the halls in his nightshirt.  
  
At this point, his growl is almost constant, a low, edged sound just within the limits of his hearing. No benefit in stopping it, not when he is alone and it serves to vent what he cannot deny and will not name. A hitch in it, and he turns, a futile attempt to focus his mind enough to obey propriety, necessity, and act out some semblance of a morning routine.  
  
( _No matter how he tries,_ if _he tries, sleep will not find him again. He may be exhausted, but those dreams were too sharp, too real, too_ vital _for him to do anything but let them fade._ )  
  
( _It should not trouble him still; he should not be afraid. She_ did _die, but she came back. Perhaps when he goes to her, it will help, because that will prove to his stubborn subconscious that she is_ alive _._ )  
  
Washing and dressing, he slowly puts himself back together again, each movement performed by rote or not at all. The idea of sending for a nutrition slab surfaces briefly, but he refuses it, tamping down any semblance of hunger into a forgotten ache. ( _It is no wonder he never quite feels full with little to eat but those slabs._ ) The entire effort is a trying, mechanical affair, but one benefit still lies within: It serves to wake him fully, and it clears from his thoughts the last of those foolish ( _desperate_ ) impulses. When he has donned his armor and cape, secured his helm over his ears the very last thing, logic is once again at the fore of his mind.  
  
He begins to question this.  
  
It is simple, _too_ simple to be a choice. If he only turns left instead of right when he steps into the hall, if he goes to the privacy of his shipboard study and shuts himself in, he will lose himself in work until the day cycle and perhaps think nothing more of matters he cannot control. He may even solve the problem of the Nalquodians' trickery before the galley staff rouse themselves enough to bring him breakfast. If he goes to Haggar instead, she will not thank him for it ( _unless she has something new to reveal, of course_ ), and he has already learned how his suggestions for her to rest will go.  
  
Logic ( _he thinks bitterly_ ) is obvious here. Yet despite that, it seems he has discovered another constant that neither death nor life can change: Whatever her name, whatever her being, whenever she is willing to work herself to exhaustion, he will not be able to stand idly by.  
  
( _He had doubted sometimes, late at night. What was it he had said to Honerva? It was so recent, but the memory is blurred. "It is not worth it," he had said. "The power is not, the planet is not. Your health suffers, and I would not trade you for_ anything. _" And she had simply looked at him and said, "This is your_ home, _Zarkon. Your people. And their potential..._ Everything. _I have come too far to stop now. And haven't you always wanted to learn the secrets of the rift just as much as I have?"_ )  
  
( _He had. He did. He knew the benefits, and he risked all for them;_ they _did, together. "I will be fine, Zarkon," she had whispered, and he believed her. She was right about that... until she was not._ )  
  
The idea of _commanding_ Haggar, even just to sleep, disquiets him as little else can—she does as she wills, and he will not level his authority against her ( _and worsening that disquiet is that unlike Honerva, she calls him "Emperor"—she may actually think she must obey_ ). Yet as he slips out into the deserted hallway, he wonders, was there ever any question? Did he truly think he could make himself believe he would go to his study?  
  
He will go to her. ( _Always._ )  
  
That stubborn nature of his readies itself to throw more requests for sleep into the ring of their conversation, but gentle ones, tempered. He is not eager for an argument, but for all it may be futile, he is well within his bounds to ask her not to go down this path ( _even if, by their agreement, he cannot tell her what a treacherous, deadly path it was that brought her_ (them) _to this very point_ ).  
  
0342—a late time somewhere in the hazy liminality between night's end and morning's beginning. As expected, he passes no living soul in the corridors, only patrols of robotic sentries and a small cluster of cleaning drones hard at work near the entrance to the labs.  
  
The door to the one she claimed slips open at his approach. So she has not yet grown petty, bold, or spiteful enough to change the lock settings to deny him. ( _She could do it if she wished to. This is the only door in his ship that he can be locked out of._ )  
  
Stepping inside, his eyes narrow against the light, its brightness bold and almost painful after the automatic dimness of the hallways. A pause; beneath his helm, an ear angles. Would the lights be lowered if her lab was in disuse? But she is nowhere to be seen... The scattered stools by the counters are empty, dozens of gleaming vials of quintessence left to their own processes.  
  
His heart skips half a beat. Perhaps some small, foolish hope stills persists, one he cannot bring himself to deny—a sharp, almost painful yearning to think that if he checks the second lab, he will find it empty, the door to her makeshift bedchamber closed.  
  
A sure sign she has finally chosen to rest.  
  
He slips through the dark, narrow corridor to the adjoining lab. The lights in this chamber are just as bright, but upon entering the room—  
  
It is empty.  
  
He blinks, and he is grateful the helm hides his ears fanning out, and that no one will see if expression steals across his face. But his eyes stray to the door to her bedchamber—and they _narrow._  
  
The door is still open. The interior remains darkened, a last holdout of the hope crumbling around him as though it never existed, and he picks his way closer, his footsteps kept quiet, his breath sticking in his chest.  
  
That lone remnant of hope dies a bitter death when he catches the faint glow of holo-screens from within.  
  
For an instant, likely a lingering effect of lack of sleep, his thoughts are nothing but a dark, tired morass. He can do nothing but stand there, his eyes narrowed, the glow from the darkness taunting him like every ghost that ever surfaced in his dreams, every fear that slipped through to the waking world.  
  
He makes the moment pass, forcing aside hesitation like some physical enemy in his path, and draws nearer.  
  
Haggar is settled in the center of what is nominally her "bed," more accurately a mass of blankets on the floor that somehow resembles a nest. ( _This is what she prefers. She_ does _tolerate pillows now, and she owns several._ ) She only raises her head when he stops in the doorway, casting a heavy shadow through the stream of brightness from her lab. Her legs are tangled in the blankets, but she is perched upright, her favored holopad in her lap and no less than five floating screens arrayed around her.  
  
"Haggar."  
  
She blinks.  
  
And what can he do here, now? Any words he might have intended to say die on his tongue. He is not her minder; he would not dare insult her by ordering her to sleep. He thinks: _I worry about you._ But nor can he offer that. His concern is unwelcome, and he must not for _anything_ reveal from where it stems.  
  
Shifting in the doorway, his jaw tightens, and he asks the only question he knows he can: "How fares your work?"  
  
Her eyes had drifted to her screens again, but they flit back to him, her gaze just a shade brighter, bare degrees more open. Something twists in his chest. She does not intend the curtness with which she meets all else, but her work is her self-given purpose, the drive with which she fuels herself, and thus it is the key to her heart. ( _In some ways, just like—_ )  
  
"I am continuing my analysis of the candidate worlds for advantages," she says, methodical, reporting. Through the glow, he catches sight of round and otherwise planetary spheres on one of her screens. "At this point, a manual review of the scans is the only way to ensure accuracy."  
  
She will be thorough—he has no doubt of that—but for all she tries to hide it, the subtleties of weariness crawl behind her eyes. She is tired, but she denies herself rest. _Why?_  
  
"And how accurate can you be if you fall asleep while you work?" he asks.  
  
Haggar goes very still. Her eyes narrow.  
  
Perhaps he should not have said that, should not have gone there, not so soon and not in such a way, but exhaustion steals both common sense and courtesy, and he is not prepared to apologize, not when he is so tired and she is, too. This night is burning in his mind like a terror he cannot wake from, one he cannot ignore, and he can bear it no longer. His muscles coil like there is something to fight, but there is not, and the sheer intensity of it tangles in his chest and threatens to smother breath, to remind him _why_ he cannot wake.  
  
She refuses to recognize what she does to herself, or if she does, she refuses to let herself care, and if anything could be even worse, it would be that. For so long now she has devoted herself entirely to the cause of selecting the perfect new Galra homeworlds, the ones rife with potential but free from any fault. It is important, _yes._ It is the fate of his ( _their_ ) people, _yes._ But it wears on her. He can _see_ the changes it brings.  
  
( _Not again._ )  
  
It is only a matter of time before the neglect of her health manifests further. He will... He will not—  
  
So easily does his temper run away with him when he is left with too little sleep and far too many thoughts in his head; he restrains his growl, but only just. "You are neglecting your health, H—Haggar."  
  
A sharp jolt of something like fear thrills through him, followed immediately by the rush of shame. So long has it been since the name Honerva last tried to creep through his lips...  
  
( _What compromises him so thoroughly that he begins to remember, that he begins to forget?_ )  
  
She pays no mind to his near-misstep, because her eyes flash and she slides the holopad to the side, the screens parting so she may see him. "This is _important,_ sire." Her voice ripples with a venom he has not heard from her before ( _but one he recalls in instances from Honerva, from heated moments in their later years, though each time was soon followed by a small, wearied apology_ ).  
  
"The planets of this system cannot sustain your people forever," she says. "And if I fail? If I choose wrong? If the colony worlds selected are not _perfect? Billions_ will die."  
  
His fists clench without thinking, the press of his claws into his gauntlets all that grounds him. Does she truly think he needs reminder of this? Of how precariously his people are placed, of how he skirts them ever closer to oblivion in his efforts to ensure they can rise stronger than before?  
  
She insults him by daring to offer such words... but how can he deny her when it is her _place?_ She is, was, and always will be the only one he trusts to tell him when he is too prideful, too misguided, too focused on his boundless ambition when this is not the proper place for it. It is her right, and that she understands and exercises this right ( _or at least is too exhausted to fear the repercussions that would befall any other who tried_ )... it should comfort him, but it does not.  
  
He is _tired._  
  
And regardless, it does not apply. She is the one who is led astray, though not by hubris or want of glory. By ever seeking perfection, perhaps, but is it not the same. She is so willing to neglect herself for the sake of others, for expediency and efficiency—for the sake of _numbers._ And if this continues—  
  
_"Do not."_ It comes out as a rough, rumbled growl, all the emotion he cannot deny laced into the vibrations of it, finally unable to be restrained. "Do not neglect your health in pursuit of a problem, not even this one. You are more important than that." _Do not do this, Honerva. Not again._  
  
She blinks, her brows furrowing, and he knows he has said too much. If he does not bring his emotions to heel, he will reveal what he has sworn not to.  
  
A steadying breath, though not a deep one. "What more can be gained by a single night of study?" he asks. _Reason._ Reason will appeal to her, if nothing else. She is a scientist. It is her language. "I know how little you sleep, Haggar—one night of rest out of a dozen. Seven vargas out of... two hundred and forty. That will not matter."  
  
Drawn back into wary, suspicious silence, she watches him, her eyes narrowed. What must she be thinking? Why would he, the unyielding Emperor, turn down such a boon she can give to him and his people? He wants these colony worlds found, and they must be found quickly in order for preparations to begin. Why will he not let her work?  
  
He fixes her with a stare and makes it as benign as he can ( _so as not to offend; she follows Galran rules of eye contact now, not Altean_ ), but it is still one that says he will not relent. He does not order her, but he still holds his opinions.  
  
She twists her lips and lowers her gaze, and he can see the exact moment in which she acquiesces.  
  
The victory is not an easy one—she still looks back up with a testing gleam in her eyes, and with a voice low and rough from the exhaustion she only now allows herself to feel, she asks, "Are you so willing to invite the consequences of this? If I fail..."  
  
"You will not."  
  
Such a sure and easy confidence sends her back into confused, stymied silence. She blinks, frowns. So monumental is her task that she had not let herself consider anything but failure, even as it is the very outcome she rallies against.  
  
But he knows her. He trusts her.  
  
She seems almost lost for a moment, adrift, her plans for the next vargas pulled out from beneath her, leaving her unsure. At last, she taps a sequence into the holopad and the screens flicker out of existence.  
  
She glances up to him.  
  
Though she will acquiesce to this, put herself before her work at long last, she does not do it because he tells her to—he knows that, and it settles one of the many knots of unrest coiling in his chest. Perhaps she simply realizes her own needs now... but that is unlikely. He knows her, and she is not the sort to venture that deep into denial, nor is she liable to be pulled out of it so easily.  
  
No—she knew what she needed. She simply ignored it. (Do not do this, _he thinks, like the ghost of so many nights long-past._ ) But he knows her well enough that the truth makes itself clear now, if inexplicable: Rather than the logic he appealed to, the most common arbiter of her decisions, this choice drew itself from an entirely different form of reason.  
  
It came wholly from trust, and that realization rattles down through his bones to his core.  
  
He is left almost wrong-footed in the doorway. Never had he dared to imagine that trust still flowed between them, not like this. Was it not yet another link her lack of memory severed? Haggar as he knows her is wary, suspicious; she is not the kind who trusts easily, but how can he deny the truth of this? That she trusts him, and somehow she does so deeper than he could have ever imagined.  
  
She casts the holopad away from her; it lands somewhere atop her nest, out of reach but easy enough to retrieve in the morning, and she begins pulling her blankets around her, settling in as she prepares to sleep. ( _She is still wearing her robes. The existence of sleep clothes, when offered to her, was displeasing._ )  
  
He must leave. Now. Stepping back from the doorway so it may close, he allows himself one last glance down at her. Exhaustion clearly tugs at her now that she permits it, and a brief, sympathetic pang of longing runs through him—what would he not give for a few more vargas of sleep himself?  
  
She blinks at him slowly, sleepily. ( _And this, too—how had he not seen it? Her guard is not raised. She lets herself be vulnerable in his presence. She_ trusts _him._ )  
  
"Good night, Haggar," he murmurs. He takes another step back.  
  
Just before the door shuts, her small voice follows him out, and it is so very like her to insist on this, the familiarity blooming warm within his chest: "It is morning, sire."  
  
A glance at the chronometer. 0365. So it is.

* * *

  
  
 The shuttle arcs around to the light side of the planet, slipping into the outer atmosphere before plunging into a thin, rust-hued sky. ( _It is red, because it had to be red. Several other candidates had this one's potential, just not the color, and while one of them may have proven somewhat better had she considered them, she could not._ )  
  
( _For this one, i_ _t had to be red._ )  
  
She stands beside the silent figure of her lord, peering down at the rolling hills beyond the viewport, the speed of their shuttle making them little but a blur. In the distance, the land gives way to shoreline and a deep violet sea.  
  
"These are the hills I spoke of," she murmurs, almost loathe to break their silence. "The ones rich in ore. If mined properly, they could supply the Galra fleet for decaphoebs."  
  
"But what of sites for settlements?" His voice is a low, contemplative rumble.  
  
"The planet is spare in truly lush environments, but that does not limit its potential. It is merely a fault of its uniquely young age and evolution. This world is fully capable of bearing life, and if samples of flora and fauna from Daibazaal are introduced, it could _become_ what a promising new home for the Galra is meant to be." She glances up at him. "This is a planet that can be _shaped,_ lord, to become closer to what it is meant to be, unlike the others that take their value from being _new._ "  
  
Something in his countenance relaxes, his shoulders loosening as he raises his chin, staring out silently at the passing landscape. Now the pilot coasts them over what could have been a forest, if forests were tangled jags of bone-white spines. One day, it may yet flourish with the red-black of rescued fern samples from the erstwhile Galran homeworld.  
  
"You considered this," he murmurs, and he sounds not only surprised, but almost... _touched._  
  
"Yes." _Of course,_ she does not say. _I could not let the last remnants of our home_ die.  
  
"I am loathe to name this one so quickly...," her lord says, "but mark this one in your notes as 'New Daibazaal.'"  
  
She would be just as hesitant—more so, even—to brand such a tentative experiment, such a fledgling hope, with that lofty, _successful_ name, but she will take it for what it is—a mark of faith. Raising her holopad, she makes a note.  
  
"This is the last of them?"  
  
"Yes." They have seen all ten of her chosen worlds now, and he has approved each one.  
  
"I will assemble a committee," he says. "Transmit all your notes to them. They will begin crafting definitive plans for colonization. It will take some time to transport all our citizens, but the shelters they have overtaken on the planets we claimed will soon become unsafe. We will start with Dalterion's Heart." He turns his head, casting her a glance she cannot quite read. "This committee will defer to you. You are the one who has brought us this far."  
  
"Yes, sire."  
  
A pause.  
  
He signals for the pilot to take them up and out of the atmosphere, but he does not take his eyes from New Daibazaal's surface until it disappears behind the clouds. Quietly, mutedly, but with a kind of feeling she cannot name, he adds, "You are the one who has ensured my people's future."  
  
The clouds thin and fade, the bright of the planet glowing against the dark of the stars. Her eyes narrow, her ears flexing back. She does not disagree.  
  
"Let us go home, sire."  
  
And so they do.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, I kind of love this chapter.

Fanning out from the chamber behind him, Zarkon's generals cast curious stares at the waiting agent, their gazes lingering on the odd fixture not present a varga prior. Under their scrutiny, the agent stands at attention, a lone figure in the deserted corridor, her gaze fixed unmoving on the far wall.  
  
This sector is above all but the top generals' clearance levels, and the beginnings of a question or reprimand stir on several of his officers' lips. A glance from him quiets them, and beyond that, he ignores them— _pointedly_ —until their footsteps trail away as they realize the subtleties of a wordless dismissal.  
  
Only once silence reigns does he let a sharp, dispassionate gaze fall on the agent, their eyes locking for only as long as is polite.  
  
"Did you retrieve it?"  
  
"Yes, sire." She clasps one fist respectfully over her chest. Part of the mission was plainly a success, the proof cradled securely in her other arm.  
  
She breaks protocol only long enough to nod to the small crate by her feet. "This box contains all I could locate without compromising the mission's primary objective."  
  
( _The primary objective is watching him, unblinking._ )  
  
Zarkon holds out a hand, and the agent deposits the creature in the crook of his arm. A tick later, she passes him the crate. Threaded beneath her motions is an undercurrent of fear, as though she anticipates punishment for her perceived failure. What use would he have for a reprimand when the handful of trinkets he sent her to retrieve were just as likely turned to dust with Daibazaal?  
  
That his soldiers grow so wary of his wrath is... _interesting._ A potential concern, perhaps, but it has its uses, enough so that he forestalls any correction.  
  
"Dismissed."  
  
She straightens her back, saluting again, but Zarkon turns and walks away. When he rounds a corner, the agent slips from his mind entirely, only the results of her mission remaining. In his arms he carries the last remnants of a life long-gone, and in his mind he traces the now-familiar route to Haggar's lab.  


* * *

  
  
She stills when he enters, perched at a counter, her feet hooked on the stool's highest crossbar and hidden by the fall of her robes—such a familiar sight. Her gaze tracks his approach, hands paused mid-motion in arranging vials of glowing quintessence. At the sight of what he carries in his arms, her eyes narrow, and she _frowns._  
  
The crate settles with a dull _thud_ on the nearest unoccupied stretch of counter. He steps back. "Do with this what you will." It contains only old belongings of Honerva's ( _of hers?_ ), and nothing with meaning—no memories, only practicality. Let her glean what use from it she will, and let her decide the objects' ultimate fate. It is only right.  
  
"...And look after this," he finishes.  
  
Her frown deepens as he draws close, a part of him aching at that, but he lingers only long enough to drop the beast into her arms, its claws scraping his armor as it goes.  
  
She wears an expression more openly bewildered than any he ever saw on this face, blinking down at the bundle of cat cradled awkwardly against her. Kova twists in her grasp and peers up. He mews loudly. ( _It means,_ "Hello.")  
  
"...What is _this?_ " Haggar asks.  
  
( _Irony is cruel._ )  
  
"This is a cat. A pet. He was rescued from my"—( _our_ )—"lodgings before the destruction of Daibazaal, then from his erstwhile guardians on Altea. Until recently, I was not aware he survived. His name is Kova."  ( _As loathe as he is to let that doomed pit of a planet grant him a single scrap more, leaving the cat to die once he knew it lived was not an option._ )  
  
Another blink, and Haggar's gaze finds his, her lips still angled down, brows drawn together in the shadows beneath her hood.  
  
"He requires regular quintessence treatments to survive," he adds. Despite the time out of her care, Kova somehow managed not to succumb from a lack of it.  
  
Someone gave the cat quintessence—someone who knew he needed it. And unless Honerva's notes were studied by others... others who knew how much she loved her pet...  
  
_Alfor—you_ traitor. _You will keep a cat alive but not the home of my people?_  
  
He will not consider that it was an act born of sentiment, the idea rejected before it can take root. Nothing comes of dwelling on that impossible paradox: That one may do great evil in the same moment as they still care.  
  
( _That makes it no better. It heals no wounds, brings nothing back._ )  
  
At the mention of quintessence, Haggar turns a markedly keener gaze on the cat, but her eyes remain narrowed, discontent. "Do we have the quintessence to spare? We barely acquire enough for adequate samples as it is."  
  
_That is your_ cat, _Honerva._ His eyes fall closed, just for a tick. "We will find enough. I will redouble our efforts."  
  
Seemingly without her noticing, her hand came to rest atop Kova's head. The cat shifts and noses at it, seeking scratches just as he always did, like nothing ever changed, his manner far more lively than Zarkon ever recalls seeing him. The beast remembers _her,_ clearly, and he missed her. ( _She is Honerva, and what can truly change that?_ )  
  
"Yes, sire," Haggar murmurs. "I will look after him." She peers down at the cat, head tilted, and carefully runs a finger over his head.  
  
Kova purrs loud enough to be heard across the room.  


* * *

  
  
As her lord's flagship, the _Amnkotan_ contains at its very core an audience chamber. Her lord calls it small and meager in comparison to what once was his, and she must trust his words, but the dark, quiet grandeur of that vast room quiets something within her regardless, tilts the world a fraction of a degree until it makes a new kind of sense.  
  
In the beginning, her lord sequestered himself in his study, isolating himself with little but records, reports, and the stars ( _and her, whenever she wished to join him_ ). He met with his generals in war rooms, chambers of military austerity designed for such.  
  
That changed. It had to, and she soon understood why.  
  
Her lord never ceased to be an emperor simply because his palace was dust and his home a debris field, but when he sits this new throne more and more, hears his generals while they kneel before him, he takes back something subtle that disruption stole. Long ago, she took to watching his soldiers and crew, a fair turnabout for how _they_ watch _her_ when they think her gaze elsewhere, and the change in them is evident. The Emperor commands from his throne again, just as he is meant to, and his subjects learn new respect... or fear... or perhaps both?  
  
Are respect and fear merely the same entity wearing different names?  
  
No... they cannot be. She respects her lord, but she does not fear him. She would not know how.  
  
Out of the darkness and fog of a mind still unsettled, the thoughts she will not let herself think, comes a moment of certainty. With it, a dozen more teach themselves to form. She learns, just as she learns from the holopad and a network of information she will surely soon exhaust, except now the topic of discovery is _herself._ Who she is, where she stands in the metaphorical sense... The full understanding of her existence, her being, still eludes her, and that burns, haunts her in the late vargas when she fails to quiet her mind and likewise fails to sleep—but in the literal, at least, the universe makes one facet of it clear.  
  
She stands at her lord's side.  
  
He wants her there for reasons she cannot fathom, the whims of his mind still unknowable for all they grow familiar as little else can be. The invitation unsettles only her own sense of logic, for a part of her learns to take his generous allowances and accept them. The opportunity has value to a scientific mind. She lurks beside his throne as he permits, studying his soldiers from a new vantage, and for her efforts she understands better both the workings of an empire and the roles of those who inhabit it.      
  
Through covert half-glances and the dark shadow of a hood, she watches her lord just the same, but his soldiers are far easier to decipher. Less satisfying in some way she cannot name, but easier.  
  
Often, she finds her gaze drifting to the lone imitations of a viewport at either side of the hall, meager projections that hint at the stars around them. _What now?_ she thinks. _What next?_ This cannot hold forever. Her lord will finish his conquest of the system, the ten new colonies she crafted for him will grow, and they will move on.  
  
Where? To the stars. Nowhere else exists for them to go.  
  
...And her lord deserves a throne room with galaxies spread on all sides, no void left for all the starlight ( _because her emperor loves the stars_ ). She knows not how to give it to him, not yet, but...  
  
But she knows her research, and she knows, even if she never grows bold enough to say it, even if the thought is too audacious for anything but belief, that with the means at her fingertips, she can do _anything,_ anything in the universe.  
  
Perhaps that is why her lord keeps her close—because he knows it as well as she. But that cannot be the reason...  
  
She tries not to dwell on it. Tries—and often succeeds.  
  
The cat, she _will_ think about—a _distraction._ Kova is her lord's cat, truly. Her emperor entrusted the creature to her for safekeeping. Still, the cat decided her company suits him just as well. Perhaps he understands she earned his master's trust. Kova himself is a fierce, baleful beast—to all others, at least. He hisses and swats at the now-wary Galra crew when they pass too close, but he will not separate from her, and with her, his claws only ever show themselves in play.  
  
The cat is an insistent, petulant, needy, keen-eyed thing, and somehow he knows whenever she plans to venture forth from the sanctuary of her labs. He perches on a counter and _yowls_ until she takes him with her, climbing onto her shoulders to ride curled across them, an odd weight at the base of her hood. An absurd sight, she imagines... but she cares little what the Galra around her think.  
  
They whisper—they always do—and because she is an Altean, she can hear them when they think her too far away, their voices too quiet, but she no longer listens—not anymore. Once, she caught half a whisper that stopped her heart, set on her shoulders the heavy, unsettling weight of knowing that whatever she forgot of her erstwhile self, any one of the Galra around her may still remember.  
  
" _...who she used to be..._ " It echoes in her memory, and she would rather have that haunting chorus of uncertainty than whatever the lieutenant knew.  
  
_Who she used to be..._ No—she will not listen to them any longer. Let them whisper. So long as they plot no treason against her emperor, their words are of no concern to her.  
  
( _Recently, a sect revealed themselves in opposition to her lord's new plans. The group's agents were gathered, shackled, locked away. Interrogated. Her lord had other matters requiring his attention, but she stayed to watch, peered into the chamber while masters of a craft pried knowledge from inside locked and broken minds._ )  
  
( _She learned something then. Even now, she cannot say what it was, but... She could conduct an interrogation. If she had to._ )  
  
The thought, one of many, curls in her mind as she walks a route swiftly growing familiar.  
  
At her approach, the sentries neither shift their rifles nor angle their featureless helms. She is permitted here—in the throne room of an emperor without his invitation.  
  
She is permitted... _everywhere._  
  
Only recently did she realize the true depth of her clearance. All that remains beyond her reach are old files in the databases marked with a symbol meant for her alone—and that is not a restriction but a _kindness._ ( _Her lord explained it, that he wished to keep her from stumbling upon the information unawares, fragments of her past preserved in digital records, but he would release the files to her if ever she wished it._ )  
  
( _He is... kind to her. Very kind._ )  
  
The doors part at her approach, and she steps into the dark cavern of her lord's audience chamber. At the far end, awash in the glow of violet-hued lights, he lifts his head from a posture of deep contemplation, his fingers steepled before him. She catches the small blink of his eyes when they find hers, and she draws nearer to the throne, Kova's tail twitching against her shoulder.  
  
Before him, she inclines her head, a bare shadow of the displays he expects from his generals, but a respect given nonetheless. ( _Some bow because they must, because her lord demands it. She bows because... because she wants to._ ) "Sire."  
  
An expression she cannot decipher passes behind his eyes, too subtle for words and too brief to study. "Haggar."  
  
Beneath her hood, an ear twitches. She always wonders—what does she say to him beyond her work or his? Yet the silence between them never weighs heavy; it is light as air ( _and she would call it as natural as breathing if some force she cannot name did not stop her_ ).  
  
But her speechlessness has no place here, not tonight, drawn suddenly away by a creeping realization that has her brows pulling together beneath her hood. "Sire..."  
  
Lightly, Kova's tail twitches.  
  
Hesitation—she never knows where the bounds are, but something in her _must_ ask, pushing beyond the uncertain limits of propriety to do so.  
  
"Are you well?"  
  
He blinks in poorly masked surprise. Is her concern truly so... _unnatural?_  
  
Perhaps the weariness hiding in the lines of his face ( _and were those always there?_ ) is mundane and expected—brought on by unsettled rest. His perpetual nightmares are a secret she guards closely, lest any mistake it for a weakness, and though she bore witness to none since she stopped imposing on his goodwill and moved into quarters of her own, she knows they persist—he told her. ( _A secret for them alone._ )  
  
"No more troubles than the usual," her lord says, and there is another secret, if that is the name for it, hidden in the way he speaks to her almost as though they are equals. Within those very same words, however, is the lie—and she sees it plainly.  
  
Her lord is too much like her, and when a matter wears on his mind or body to the point of fraying, to the point of _enduring_ rather than _solving,_ he hides it... but that was too close to an admission. She knows not what it means, but it stirs something icy in her veins, sets her thoughts turning, leaving her glad her lord can see little of her expression beneath her hood.  
  
He could see enough, though, to ask after her own wellbeing if he wanted to, but...  
  
_Odd._ His eyes rest on her, but for the first time she recalls, they do not see _deeply,_ neither searching nor studying nor seeking. Her lord is not displeased with her, but what...?  
  
As though summoned, conjured from the air like the magic she tries each quintant to teach herself, the words spill out: "Progress continues on the quintessence extraction device. A prototype will soon be ready for testing."  
  
That softens the lines of his face, something in him relaxing as he latches on to it, a word of good news in the midst of a war. Perhaps he merely wears thin under the strains of rule after all...  
  
"The details are prepared in my lab," she adds. "Whenever you desire, I will show you." An invitation waits hidden in the words, and a part of her wants him to misunderstand, to brush it aside for later, but another part finds her oddly desperate to see him rise from the throne, to prove that the depths of the exhaustion nagging at her senses were nothing but an illusion, the useless, inexplicable worry of an over-wary mind. ( _He works too hard. The war wears on him. The nightmares keep him awake. His hatred for old allies still hollows out the core of him._ )  
  
( _Once, for an odd, ill-content phoeb, she feared she would simply die again, her body remembering the life it harbors is no longer natural. Never before did that futile fear think to apply itself to him, but..._ )  
  
( _She is imagining things, is she not?_ )  
  
Her lord is silent, his gaze drifted far from hers.  
  
"...Sire?"  
  
"Perhaps I will retire early tonight." His voice pitches regretful, almost apologetic, because he _does_ like to see her progress. Ruefully, bitterly, he adds, "Sitting on a throne for vargas proves more tiring than expected."  
  
And that... She does not imagine _that._  
  
A long pause stretches, her fingers fidgeting minutely at her sides, her thoughts whirling, the silence pulling taut until her lord's gaze focuses again and finds hers, curious, perhaps searching to see if he offended her.  
  
She bows her head, hiding her face. "Very well. Sleep well, sire."  
  
That farewell... It is oddly familiar ( _too familiar?_ ) for an emperor and his... whatever she is to him—( _and would it be wrong to hope she is a friend?_ )—but he allows it, the lines of his face softening almost imperceptibly, and he inclines his head in acknowledgment. That, she takes her own pleasure from. Never did she have what she could call a friend or companion ( _and never did she need one_ )... but her lord was always present, always there, ever since the beginning.  
  
She turns to go, and Kova rises, his claws digging in to her skin as he twists and gives his old master one last look. She cannot spare a moment for the cat's nostalgic whims. Once beyond the chamber's doors, she allows herself a quicker pace, heedless of the sentries' robotic sensors tracking her.  
  
Kova resettles and _mrrows_ in her ear. _Yes, Kova,_ she thinks, but talking—even in thoughts alone—to the cat is the most ridiculous habit she ever developed... though perhaps Kova noticed the same anomalies she did.  
  
The evening is barely into its first varga, far too early for sleep, and she knows her lord too well to miss that he prefers not to retire until midnight. In fact, if given a choice, he would not retire at all, and no amount of nightmares changed either that or the fact he does so regardless, fond of promoting healthy sleep patterns in himself.  
  
For the first time, she gives true, honest thought to the nature of his sleep. She herself scarcely needs it, so different from those early nights when she curled in the dark of her lord's closet at the earliest opportunity—the only place she could let herself settle. That changed, through no understandable means, but for her lord... it did not. They are not the same, and there is no reason to expect they should be, yet...  
  
For reasons she dares not consider, they were companions in death, and somehow they remain connected in life. Their biometric readings are as different as any two species would be, yet they are so far apart from the separate standards of _Altean_ and _Galra_ that they again become similar, the only two beings in the known universe like themselves. Is this a puzzle? Or is it a problem? What does it mean?  
  
She needs no rest tonight, for that is the direction her cells and her life-force took her in, and she will not require it again for nearly two movements. Through halls in which she ignores the soldiers' stares with a practiced ease, she traces the familiar path back to her laboratory and gently deposits the cat on the first counter available. She will need all her focus for this.  
  
Locating her preferred holopad, she calls up screens upon screens of statistics, leaving each one in place only long enough to memorize the data, and as she does... she begins to realize.  
  
The understanding is not a clear one, instead reaching into parts of her far from the core, touching the trailing ends of instinct stripped of all meaning. It guides her fingers, pulling her deep into the archive of whatever files the Galra had on quintessence, none of it composed by her own ( _present self's_ ) hand—but she seeks, and in ways she cannot understand, she finds. The database speaks to her in figures and formulas and scrawled digits she must pause to translate from Altean. She finds, by chance or premonition, her screen looped back to the familiar: The records of quintessence as it applies to the cat.  
  
She blinks, frowns, understands nothing, understands _something..._  
  
...and deep in the part of her mind now dedicated to vague recollections of forgotten research data, something almost like a memory stirs.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know how to warn for this but feel like I should, so, uh... If 1500 words from the POV of someone slowly slipping closer and closer to death doesn't sound like something you'd enjoy reading, take care with this chapter. Nothing too terrible can happen, though, considering the 'happy ending' tag up there, so consider that too. It's just gets kinda heavy here.

Her emperor is not well.  
  
Gone unrecognized for far too long, some stressor or ailment she cannot name eats away at him, erodes and corrodes and _weakens,_ greater even than the efforts of ensuring his people's survival, heavier than all the ( _necessary_ ) weights he carried before. _What is it?_ Late at night, she scours her archives for clues, but they fail her, an almost personal betrayal, her old comforts now little more than useless data flinging itself at empty queries. Perhaps, then, this is a thing _no one_ has words for—or perhaps she must merely search deeper...  
  
With neither her lord's request nor approval nor his knowledge at all, she takes to worrying after his health. A poor excuse for a hobby, but she is not made to let problems _lie._ She spends what passes for her idle vargas chasing answers to questions she still cannot comprehend the nature of, her frustrations mounting and growing until even her lord notices, her too-keen watching turning impossible to ignore.  
  
He insists he is well, that nothing troubles him, and she tries to believe him, for her lord does not lie to her, but then guilt gnaws at her for entertaining the idea that her own deepest, most _important_ instincts are _wrong._  
  
( _She is_ not wrong, _and he never lies intentionally..._ )  
  
When all other avenues run dry, she perches in his quarters each night and waits for the moment he wakes from those dreams he never speaks of, his claws scraping at his chest and fear-scent almost tangible in the air. She merely peers through the darkness and offers a single, gentle reminder: _"Breathe."_  
  
( _He does._ )  
  
The nightmares are old and the demands of an empire on the brink of ruin just the same, but something of this is _new_ —( _he was not like this before, and_ why?)—though if she considers it ( _which she does,_ interminably), the change was building for some time ( _and for how long did she manage to miss it?_ ). Her lord's face was not always the hollow, lined visage he wears now, his voice not such a low, weary growl, the words a shade too _empty_ at their core. ( _Why does no one else hear it?_ )  
  
Whatever brought this change, it took his newfound resolution for progress, for conquest, for victory in spite of all, and bled it thin. _He_ is worn thin, a shadow of the emperor she knows so well ( _knew first, before all else_ ). He sleeps, but a full half-dozen vargas cannot rest him, not even when he grows too exhausted for dreams and she can no longer justify lurking in his quarters in the dark. He eats less, claims it turns his stomach. His hands shake when he thinks no one can see—  
  
( _"What are the signs of quintessence-dependent degradation, Kova?" she asks. She does not expect the cat to answer. She is only half-sure why she expected the cat to know, entirely uncertain why she asked at all, but Kova merely blinks and meows as if he thinks that is the reply she seeks, and she returns to her work yet again._ )  
  
She soon asks her lord for leave to test an experiment: The quintessence extractor prototype, at long last.  
  
Entire ticks pass before he answers—an eternity for one as quick-minded as he—but the assent comes with a flicker of pleased satisfaction that aches in its sheer familiarity. He gives her the use of any shuttle she desires, and within the varga, she watches the _Amnkotan_ vanish into the stars with a strange twist in her chest.  
  
Crouching on the loam-and-green-things ground of a nearby uninhabited planet ( _a rejected colony world_ ), she positions the awkward, inauspicious device in a cluster of creeping, curling ferns and waits. The armed soldiers her lord insisted she take as guards mill nearby, and with her gaze fixed to the gentle flicker of machinery, she keeps one ear angled to track their quiet gossip—a distraction, if nothing else, to keep reins on her own nervous mind.  
  
This is important. It cannot fail. It _must not_ fail. If it fails...  
  
A varga later, the vial in the heart of the extractor brims with a thin, watery liquid, gleaming faintly gold in its depths. She takes it, and as her fingertips brush the glass, it _resonates._ Without thinking, she splashes small droplets onto her bare hand because she is foolish and reckless and wild, and the quintessence fairly melts into her, becoming _a part of_ her skin, seeping in and singing like a touch. She does not repeat the experiment, because she is not quite _that_ foolish and reckless and wild, and because—more importantly—she will need this.  
  
She is calm now, uncertainty somehow burned away in the light.  
  
Kova curls around her shoulders while she works. _Just like the cat,_ she thinks, following awarenesses with no names, instincts without ends, even if this is not like the cat at all, even if she cannot yet see the point where logic links intuition fully into truth. Some creeping, gnawing unease in her _recognizes,_ and she trusts it, lives in the feeling now, because she can keep no other counsel in a universe of worries and uncertain fears.  
  
( _Thoughts press into her mind, so strong she would dread their source, would fear they were something more than old, insistent research fragments returning their knowledge, but she manages to keep such worries at bay. She is not_ remembering. _She is too_ busy _to remember._ )  
  
She stands and orders her guards to retrieve the rest of the vials from the shuttle. They hasten to obey, and it is likely because she... has some sort of favor with the Emperor—( _because that much is clear, even if she cannot fathom_ why)—but they are always eager to obey her.  
  
Curiosity stirs, just for a single, distracted tick, but she shoves that down where it belongs. There is work to be done, and it is urgent.

* * *

  
Perhaps he wakes into a nightmare, opens his eyes to dark and finally realizes, _Yes, this is what it means to die._ Strange awarenesses curl in thoughts too weak to hold them, memories without sources, knowledge without meaning. There is a body that is his and he almost recognizes it, and he has a mind, too, that drifts farther away and feels less like his own with each passing moment.  
  
The morning he cannot wake is like a long-coming promise finally realized, and through the bare dregs of consciousness he is aware enough to recall his recent health in a new, worrying light and recognize that he may die here— _again._ He is just embittered enough to the concept of life and death that he would pin his ears back in annoyance if he could feel them.  
  
He is uncertain whether he cannot breathe or if he merely lost all awareness of the lungs in his chest. His eyes will not open, and he gives up on trying to make them, to break free from this consternating dark. He simply lies there, and yes, he _is_ breathing ( _again, if he ever stopped_ ), and he is not dreaming but he is not quite awake. He merely... _exists._ Adrift.  
  
He knows not where he is, nor what, nor why, and after an indeterminate amount of time slips through his grasp, he knows nothing else at all.

* * *

  
Time eludes him. Vargas, doboshes, decapahoebs...? An _eternity?_  
  
It slips away.  
  
He would swear he hears voices, but they can be there for no more than a tick, so brief he must have imagined them after all. They too return to nothingness. He turns his focus to breathing, so much as he can focus on anything at all, but he loses that and loses time and awareness slips away again—

* * *

  
Hands. Strangely small hands, a touch on his face, tilting him as though studying, and he wants to raise his head, open his eyes, _speak._  
  
Then the touch vanishes, and he wonders if he imagined it too, but it _felt_ real. A part of him chases the sensation, _wants_ it to be real, even if he knows not why. He wants to say something but he cannot be certain _what,_ and he wants to _survive_ but he cannot resist the void wrapped around his chest and drawing him downward.  
  
The touch returns, a firm press of fingertips against his temples except for the moments where it wavers, adjusts, and he wonders about the idea of uncertainty and whether it applies here but forgets why he thought it an instant later. Awareness slips away again, and he no longer remembers how he once sought to command it to return.  
  
That touch. It will be gone when ( _if_ ) he regains consciousness. He knows how this goes by now.  
  
The idea of that loss, the disappearance of a single thread connecting him to something he knows not the name of, is an emptiness all its own, but he cannot—  
  
_Brightness._  
  
Something bright.  
  
A current of something golden and living and vital, so powerful and potent he imagines opening his eyes, rising, perhaps conquering the universe itself—and he imagines _living,_ life... something...  
  
He feels it in every part of him, down to the claws on his toes, and the light surrounds him, _becomes_ him, and he _breathes._ His chest expands and contracts and he _continues_ to breathe, and the hands grip his face before they slide away, tense and heavy, traveling to his chest and then to his side, where his heart may perhaps beat too wildly but he cannot bring himself to care.  
  
A voice speaks urgently. What it says does not reach him, only the tone, and for a half-instant he wants to reply, but then that slips away too, _everything,_ the darkness returning with a distant pain knifing through it.  
  
Of course... how could he have forgotten? The dreams should have reminded him. Death is not dark—it is endless, powerful _brightness._ It is light, and it is life, and when he dies...  
  
When he died...  
  
No, he cannot remember. There was a reason, a meaning, _something_ in there, but it disappears like all the rest. When he next comes to awareness, he detects only the weak effort of his struggling breath and a brief, numb acknowledgment of _nothingness_ before that too fades away again.

* * *

  
Something warm trickles in, a gentle thread of golden glow. He breathes. It soothes the knots from his muscles, presses him back into the mattress, and he goes. He flows where it wills him, and when it snakes into his mind, bright fingers of light, he lets _it_ support him for a time.  
  
When the light fades again—all too soon—he floods back into the dark and the quiet, but even when the last remnants leave him alone, the weight of nothingness does not claim him—not yet.  
  
He still has life enough in him to peer into the dark, and he does, like he watches, waits. He tries to open his eyes but cannot... though that does not stop him from trying.  
  
( _He wants to_ survive.)

* * *

  
Light trickles into his limbs, brings them back to life, connects them to a working, living whole. He twitches his fingers, only on one hand, but he curls them tightly into sheets and he _breathes._  
  
...And then it fades away again, just as it always does. Then it comes, and goes... and comes, and goes... like breath—or like a heartbeat, threading life through him. A voice reaches him in his clearer moments; it is familiar, and the sound of it steadies him. The words escape him, but he thinks he knows the tone. Possibly. Not a thing he knows in words, but he _does_ know it, he would swear he does. If not now, then from long ago, but what is time when he simply _is?_  
  
When at last he manages to crack his eyes open and see, his head lies canted to the side and directly before his vision rests a familiar face. It was not familiar, once, even when it was, but he knows it now.  
  
Haggar narrows her eyes, and—it takes a moment for her to speak, like she must pull the words from the depths of wherever he has gone too... but _this_ tone is all wrong—raw and strained and _weak_ —and it freezes something within him. A whisper: "...One moment. Just give me a moment, and I can do it again."  
  
His eyes slip closed without him willing them to, and he thinks the darkness will claim him again but he pushes back against it, pins his ears back and _resists,_ because he must _stay._  
  
In the last moment before he loses that battle, there is a touch to his forehead and then there is _light—_

* * *

  
He thinks he hears ghosts, one time. Not the old ghosts of his past, not voices in dreams and nightmares and memories—the living ghosts, rather, things he has no names for but swears exist regardless.  
  
He calls them ghosts not because they remain, not because they are things once dead, but because they lurk in the corners of sight and sound, half-real and unexplainable— _inescapable_ —and they _haunt,_ small things that nevertheless manage to shake a being to their core.  
  
In the dark, he cannot fathom why he would hear the faint sounds of determinedly muffled sobbing. He forgets, there in his half-aware state, why he would know those sounds at all, only that he does.  
  
He forgets that Galra cannot cry and that he has sworn vengeance against several species that do.  
  
He is forgetting something important, he thinks, but perhaps this is merely a dream. Dreams are often strange.  
  
He forgets that it is rare anymore that his dreams are not memories repurposed or revisited... and he forgets that here on the bridge between life and death, he is not truly asleep.

* * *

  
He hears her voice clearly again when she kneels over him, her face directly above his, and he opens his eyes and _sees_ her.  
  
"I will _not_ let you fade," she growls, and that tone is still wrong, _too_ wrong.  
  
Her hands shake when she places them on either side of his face.  
  
"I will _do_ this," she mutters. "You have done so much—for me, for your people. If I could keep the _quiznaking_ cat alive, I can do it for you, even if it kills me."  
  
His eyes widen, he wants to open his mouth and speak—  
  
But the light that floods him steals all words, all sense, except he can _feel_ it this time—know and understand the nature of it, the methods... It is a bolt of pure energy threading into his veins—( _no, deeper than that_ )—a power transfered, from her to him.  
  
_Quintessence,_ he thinks, and he _realizes—_  
  
He is not quite certain what he realizes, does not remember it later, but he does remember the sense that something _shatters,_ then a small, sudden weight collapsing against his chest... and after that, nothing. Nothing at all.

* * *

  
The morning he wakes... is not a morning, not even in the word's most technical definition. He draws in breath and moves as if stirring for the first time in eons, his limbs aching like lightning was pulled through them while he slept. As he levers himself up, a tucked sheet falls from him, and the chronometer on the far wall pierces the dark to inform him the time is mere doboshes before midnight.  
  
He tries to lift a hand to rub his aching head but fails—stopped by some force he cannot name. His still-foggy mind takes ticks to make sense of it, but the hand is simply tangled in sheets weighed down by a small, robed form, half-curled and half-sprawled and... shaking in her sleep?  
  
"...Haggar?" he whispers, his voice raw and rough from disuse.  
  
Even that small sound wakes her. If what she murmurs as she starts is in fact the apology it sounds like, he will say nothing of it. He knows all too well the look and feel of one still shaking off dreams ( _and he knows not what haunts her sleep, nor why she apologizes. He rarely apologizes in his dreams, not even when a bayard aims at his heart, because he did all he could and regrets nothing in all the universe_ ).  
  
Haggar blinks, and upon seeing him awake, she seems to struggle for words. She merely angles her head away, tangled hair and a rumpled hood hiding her face. At last she murmurs, "...You are alive."  
  
"I am." ( _He is._ ) "You thought I would not be?" Was the situation so... _dire?_  
  
( _It was._ )  
  
"I... feared. But I _tried._ I did everything I could. The infusion could not make up for the degradation, not at first, and then it could, but... I could not." Still curled atop the blankets, she scrubs at her face, rubs tired eyes. "I did _everything_ I could."  
  
She angles her head up then, and he recognizes a happiness, such a rare look on her, that takes him back to a time when the light of the rift glowed behind her and they were both such different people, but for all that changed, he could almost utter the words along with her, another experiment successful:  
  
"And it worked."  
  
"What happened?" he asks. "What did you do?"  
  
"You were destabilizing," she says. " _Quickly._ Your soldiers radioed me at the testing site. I am unsure why they thought to, but—" She looks away. "I had enough then. Quintessence. The extraction device worked. I had known you were declining. That was why I went for it. Something told me I may need to do this for you—just as for Kova, but on a much larger scale. It was... more than I anticipated."  
  
Her brows draw together beneath her hood as she gathers focus as best she can in this state. "I was forced to devise new methods. The device used to infuse quintessence into the cat would not work, so I needed to make a direct transference instead. My quintessence to yours. The strain was... unanticipated, as I not only had to transfer it to you, but take it into myself in the raw form before that. If I had known before..."  
  
She frowns briefly, blinks away regrets unnamed.  
  
"I attempted to study while I worked, to form a hypothesis. I used my newer senses to discover that not only is quintessence your life, it is _keeping you_ alive. It fades, however—is _finite_ in a way it should not be. Thus, you require more. This will continue, I am afraid. I will be better equipped to assist next time, and we will not leave it so long. As inconvenient as a quintessence dependency is, it will not threaten your life again."  
  
He wants to put a name to this, to what he feels. Gratitude, for his life saved. Debt—one he will not begrudge. And a tumult of _more_ —the realization that she put so much into the effort, the bare-instinct guilt that she had to, bone-deep awareness of a loyalty he had not recognized so clearly before...  
  
...but he cannot name this. Not in his own mind, because no words exist for the truth of it. He cannot fumble the meaning aloud, because if he whispers, _Love,_ she will be gone from this room and from the nearness of his life, the flighty, fearful, _familiar_ being that she is.  
  
There is no way in this life for him to name it, so he says, "Sleep, Haggar."  
  
She blinks at him, brows furrowed in confusion.  
  
"You exhausted yourself with this," he says, "however necessary. Rest, regain your strength."  
  
Her eyes narrow, jaw firming, and he can almost detect ears flattening down beneath her hood, a gesture too Galran for Honerva but somehow perfectly natural for Haggar.  
  
"I will find somewhere else," he offers, wary with her comfort and speaking before he can consider the logistics of _how,_ as in this state moving from here without stumbling and falling immediately would be an impressive feat indeed.  
  
She huffs, and that too is an almost Galran sound. Turning her back to him, she curls until she makes herself comfortable. "Do not bother. I would not oust you from your own bed when you need rest as well. You are not recovered."  
  
...Very well, then. Gingerly, he lies back again, raising the covers around him.  
  
Before he settles his head on the pillow, he chances one last glance at her. The urge strikes him to speak once more, to say something that struggles to be said, but with a pause, he peers deeper. She lies curled almost as small as her form will go, but her breathing has turned slow and even, every line of her gone suddenly still. That quickly, she fell back asleep...  
  
So be it. Let them rest, then—both of them.  
  
It has been too long. Or not long enough, or... He does not pretend to make sense of it. Not any more. What they became... these changes he cannot name, both grand and quiet, and how suddenly the universe around him eludes comprehension as if his mind cannot escape the past... But this is his life now. _Their_ lives. Whatever else it is, he can at least be certain of that.  
  
He loves her.  
  
He loves her still, loves her already, and he cannot put a name to which it is—one, the other, or both—but that does not quite matter right now, does it? She is correct—he must sleep. He is in no state to consider this. They must both recover, and when they wake...  
  
Only then will he think on it. Only then—or perhaps never.  
  
But now?  
  
Now, he sleeps.  
  
( _...and he dreams of gold but not of death._ )

**Author's Note:**

> Come cry about these two with me on [tumblr](jade-clover.tumblr.com).


End file.
